telecommunications
Auto Added by WPeMatico
5G is now live in 24 markets, GSMA predicts it’ll be 20% of global connections by 2025 — and eyes a big tech break-up
The next-gen flavor of mobile connectivity, 5G, is now live in 24 markets globally, according to GSMA’s annual state of the global mobile economy report.
The cutting edge network tech is capable of supporting speeds up to 100x faster than LTE/4G and delivering latency of just a few milliseconds, as well as being able to connect many more devices per cell site. As it rolls out, it’s expected to underpin a new wave of “smarter” digital services which bake in real-time AI assistance and help drive the digitization of legacy industries.
In last year’s report the carrier association didn’t break out a firm figure for markets where 5G is live — but dubbed the tech “a reality” after commercial launches in the US and South Korea towards the end of 2018. It also said it was expecting 16 more “major countries” to have launched 5G networks by the end of 2019.
It’s now touting “significant traction” for 5G — saying 79 operators across a further 39 markets had announced plans to launch commercial 5G services as of January 20, 2020.
As it stands actual 5G connections remain a fraction of the connectivity pie vs current (4G) and previous gen cellular favors. Per the report, 4G became the dominant mobile tech globally in 2019 — with over 4BN connections, accounting for 52% of total connections (excluding licensed cellular IoT).
The GSMA expects 4G connections to continue to grow for the next few years, peaking at just under 60% of global connections by 2023.
For 5G its forecast is that it will account for a fifth (20%) of global connections by 2025, with the carrier association expecting “particularly strong” take-up across developed Asia, North America and Europe.
(For wider context, almost half of the global population (3.8BN people) are now users of the mobile internet as a whole (2G-5G), per the report — which is forecast to grow to 61% (5BN people) by 2025.)
It’s worth emphasizing that the presence of 5G in a market does not mean universal coverage.
On the contrary, 5G rollouts have tended to be targeted on urban centers. Which means 5G availability in the 24 markets that have launched commercial networks so far is likely highly limited vs population. There are also still relatively few 5G smartphones vs non-5G handsets (though since this time last year more are being unboxed; Sony, for example, just announced its first 5G handsets).
Perhaps, most importantly, consumer demand for the next-gen flavor of connectivity has yet to be robustly stood up. The GSMA’s report poses the (existential, for telcos) question of: “Will they pay for it?”
“The number of live 5G markets is increasing by the day and consumers’ awareness of the technology is also growing as hype makes way for reality. However, there is wide variation across the globe in terms of intentions to upgrade to 5G and the willingness to pay more for it,” it concedes.
“In general, consumers in South Korea and China – having witnessed some of the earliest launches – appear to be the most excited by the prospect of upgrading to 5G, while those in the US, Europe and Japan seem more content with 4G for the time being,” the GSMA adds, before striking an upbeat note: “5G is still in its infancy though; as more tangible use cases are deployed, more consumers will appreciate the benefits of 5G.”
Aka, 5G needs a killer app. But one has yet to emerge. (Edit note: A global pandemic that triggers a mass transition to remote working and virtualized socializing could have potential though. After all, concerns about the corona virus did force the GSMA to cancel its own annual shindig, MWC, just last month.)
Despite the report’s prediction that consumers will, down the line, be sold on 5G’s “benefits” another graphic in the report maps out the current reality — that “awareness of 5G does not necessarily translate into an intention to upgrade”.
It shows adults in markets including the UK, Australia, Spain and Italy having high awareness of the tech but low intent to pay for 5G, with less than 35% saying they want to upgrade. The US market also has a similarly high level of awareness of 5G — and only a slightly higher intention to upgrade (~40%+).
The GSMA writes that more needs to be done by carriers to “raise awareness” of other “benefits” than just higher data speeds, touting claimed advantages such as “improved mobile service coverage”, “innovative new services” and “connectivity for previously unconnected devices” as having 5G marketing potential.
However, on the latter point at least, the report also chronicles variable and often low appetite — certainly outside China — for a range of ‘smart’ devices…
Still, the GSMA predicts billions more IoT devices will be coming on stream over the next five years — saying that between 2019 and 2025 the number of global IoT connections will more than double to almost 25 billion, while it expects global IoT revenue to more than triple to $1.1 trillion.
Another segment of the report deals with the perennial issue of stagnant operator revenue growth vs Internet companies, with the GSMA noting telcos continue to lag tech giants and major device makers.
“For many operators, revenue growth as a percentage is in the low single digits, if that,” it writes. “As core telecoms revenue stagnates, a common strategy now for major operator groups is to seek revenue growth from adjacent services. Pay TV, media, IoT, enterprise solutions and the broader array of digital services still only account for a minor share of operator revenues (10–20% for most), although there are a few notable exceptions, largely enabled by M&A activity.”
It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that top of the GSMA’s 2025 prediction/wish-list is a bold one that one of the GAFA companies (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) will be broken up. (It makes not suggestion of which — though plenty of American eyes are now on Google.)
Other near-term hopes on the GSMA’s list are that “AR eye glasses reach the mass market with a form factor from at least one global OEM”; health wearables become “part of the solution to overburdened public health systems”; and “private enterprise networks explode and become a battleground between telcos and cloud companies” (we don’t think they mean explode literally).
There’s also another 2025 prediction for 5G — that the technology becomes “the first generation in the history of mobile to have a bigger impact on enterprise than consumers”.
Which is certainly one way to silver-line a low-demand ‘cloud’ and hedge (hopefully) for business buy-in to make up for lacklustre consumer desire to pay more to do the same stuff slightly faster* (*depending on network conditions).
“Governments and regulators must play their part to help propel 5G into commercial use by implementing policies that encourage advanced technologies (e.g. AI and IoT) to be applied across all economic sectors,” the GSMA writes elsewhere in the report — a call to action that aligns exactly with policy priorities recently set out by the new European Commission, suggesting telco lobbying in Brussels has borne fruit.
Thierry Breton, the Commissioner for internal market — who’s now driving a pan-EU strategy to encourage the pooling and reuse of industrial data that leans heavily on the deployment of what’s he’s called “critical” 5G networks — is also a former chairman and CEO of France Telecom.
You can download the full GSMA report here.
Powered by WPeMatico
A list of MWC coronavirus cancellations so far: Facebook, AT&T, Sprint, Intel now also staying away
Yet more big names are being added to the list of companies that are staying away from the world’s biggest mobile tradeshow, Mobile World Congress (MWC), with Facebook and Intel among the latest to cancel their attendance. Due to take place in Barcelona just under two weeks’ time, on February 24-27, the event has been hampered by the ongoing situation with the novel coronavirus outbreak.
“Out of an abundance of caution, Facebook employees won’t be attending this year’s Mobile World Congress due to the evolving public health risks related to coronavirus,” said a spokesperson for Facebook, in a message worded not unlike a number of others that have been put out by others choosing not to attend. “We will continue to collaborate with the GSMA and our partners and thank them for their efforts.”
Spanish publication El Pais is also reporting that the GSMA, the body that organizes the event, is due to meet on Friday and consider its next steps, which could include suspending the event. It also notes that major carriers Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom are also considering options, although nothing has been confirmed yet. Orange has told us it still intends to participate.
We have reached out to the GSMA and it has declined to comment on the El Pais report. “We don’t comment on internal meetings,” the spokesperson said. (The GSMA would be meeting regularly regardless in the lead-up to the event.)
The annual international telco industry event typically attracts more than 100,000 delegates from around 200 countries across the conference’s four days — with every major telco and tech giant exhibiting (with the exception of Apple which prefers its own events).
But with international concern now focused on the novel coronavirus outbreak — which was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization late last month and as of today has infected over 40,000 people with more than 1,000 deaths — a growing number of companies have announced they are pulling out of attending.
Others, such as Telenor, TCL and ZTE, have cancelled press events or said they will scale back their presence though are still planning to attend. Today Chinese phone maker Xiaomi also confirmed it will attend — tweeting a statement detailing the precautions it’s taking.
Having carriers pulling out of the event is a huge deal, since they are the key “buyers” at the trade show and at the heart of the organization, the GSMA, that is behind it. And while big tech companies like Facebook are a newer, but now very regular, presence the event — which underscores how MWC has changed over the years, and how the mobile industry is trying to evolve with the times, where “tech” and “telco” are no longer distinct entities — they are nonetheless leaving a large hole in the makeup of the show by not being there.
The GSMA has announced a series of restrictions intended to reduce the risk of the coronavirus infections at the conference, including a ban on travellers coming from the province in China where the virus was first identified. It has also said it will implement temperature screening of attendees; require conference-goers self-certify they have not come into contact with an infected person; and is suggesting delegates adopt a ‘no hand shake’ policy in a bid to limit contact.
There is a lot riding on MWC going ahead. The El Pais report notes that MWC generates some 14,000 temporary jobs and generates €492 million (nearly $540 million) for the city. Per the GSMA site, more than 2,400 companies are exhibiting at MWC this year. Yesterday, a spokesperson told TechCrunch that MWC had 2,800 companies signed up to exhibit, but it’s not sharing how many are still going to be there.
See below for a list of companies that have cancelled their attendance at the conference — we’ll update with any additions as we get them.
Organizations that have cancelled their attendance at MWC 2020
ARCEP, France’s FCC (confirmed via email)
AT&T (confirmed via email)
F5 Networks (confirmed via email)
Facebook (confirmed via email)
Gigaset (confirmed via email)
KMW Communications (confirmed via email)
Radwin (confirmed via email)
Rakuten (confirmed via email)
Sprint (confirmed via email)
Viber (confirmed via email)
This article was updated with a correction to remove ‘Rakuten’ from the list of cancellations after an earlier spokesperson provided us with incorrect information. And in a further update, the CEO of Viber, owned by Rakuten, also said the messaging app would be attending after all:
“As of today Viber will have a presence at MWC, including me,” said Djamel Agaoua. “Like all companies, we are evaluating the risk to our employees and if our position changes we will keep you updated. Sorry about the confusion.”
Powered by WPeMatico
Sony to pull out of MWC over coronavirus outbreak
Japanese electronics firm Sony is the latest phone maker to announce it’s withdrawing from the Mobile World Congress (MWC) tradeshow, citing concerns about the coronavirus outbreak.
“As we place the utmost importance on the safety and wellbeing of our customers, partners, media and employees, we have taken the difficult decision to withdraw from exhibiting and participating at MWC 2020 in Barcelona, Spain,” Sony wrote in a press release.
MWC is due to take place in Barcelona between February 24-27.
Sony said it will now run a press conference planned for the event via its official Xperia YouTube channel at the scheduled time of 8:30 AM (CET) on February 24.
“Sony would like to thank everyone for their understanding and ongoing support during these challenging times,” it added.
In recent days, a number of companies have announced they’re pulling out or scaling back their presence at the conference as a result of concerns about the spread of the virus, including Amazon, Ericsson, LG, NVIDIA and ZTE.
The World Health Organization dubbed the emergence and spread of the novel coronavirus a global emergency late last month.
At the time of writing, the majority of infections and deaths from the virus remain in China, where the virus was first identified in the town of Wuhan in the Hubei province.
Several Chinese tech companies, including ZTE and Xiaomi, have said they will make changes to their participation in MWC related to coronavirus concerns, such as placing limits on staff travelling from China or requiring they self isolate in the period before attending.
Yesterday the organizers of MWC, the GSMA, also announced stringent rules to try to safeguard attendees, including a ban on travellers from Hubei and a requirement that all travellers who have been in China must be able to prove they have been outside the country 14 days prior to the event.
Attendees will also be required to self-certify they have not been in contact with anyone affected, the GSMA said. Temperature screening will also be implemented at the event.
Last year the annual mobile tech conference drew almost 110,000 attendees from 198 countries.
“While further planning is underway, we will continue to monitor the situation and will adapt our plans according to developments and advice we receive. We are contending with a constantly evolving situation, that will require fast adaptability,” the GSMA also said.
Attendance at MWC has regularly broken 100,000 in recent years, but 2020’s conference seems likely to mark a break with business as usual as companies face pressure to rethink their travel priorities.
Powered by WPeMatico
Qualcomm faces fresh competition scrutiny in Europe over RFFE chips for 5G
Qualcomm is facing fresh antitrust scrutiny from the European Commission, with the regulator raising questions about radio frequency front-end (RFFE) chips which can be used in 5G devices.
The chipmaker has been expanding into selling RFFE chips for 5G devices, per Reuters, It is encouraging buyers of its 5G modems to also buy its radio frequency front-end chips rather than buying from other vendors and integrating their hardware with its 5G modem chips.
A European Commission spokeswomen confirmed the action, telling us: “We can confirm that the Commission has sent out questionnaires, as part of a preliminary investigation into the market for radio frequency front end.”
We’ve reached out to Qualcomm for comment.
The chipmaker disclosed the activity in its 10Q investor filing. Qualcomm wrote that the regulator requested information in early December, “notifying us that it is investigating whether we engaged in anti-competitive behavior in the European Union (EU)/European Economic Area (EEA) by leveraging our market position in 5G baseband processors in the RFFE space.”
Qualcomm says it’s in the process of responding to the request for information.
It’s not yet clear whether the investigation will move to a formal footing in future. “Our preliminary investigation is ongoing. We cannot comment on or predict its timing or outcome,” the EC spokeswoman told us.
“It is difficult to predict the outcome of this matter or what remedies, if any, may be imposed by the EC,” Qualcomm also wrote in the investor filing, adding: “We believe that our business practices do not violate the EU competition rules.”
If a violation is found it also warns investors that the EC has the power to impose a fine of up to 10 percent of its annual revenues, and it could also issue injunctive relief that prohibits or restricts certain business practices.
The preliminary probe of Qualcomm’s 5G modem business is by no means the first antitrust action the chip giant has faced in Europe.
Last summer, Europe’s competition commission fined Qualcomm close to $270M following a long-running antitrust investigation into whether it used predatory pricing when selling UMTS baseband chips, with the regulator concluding Qualcomm had used predatory pricing to force a competitor out of the market.
Two years ago the Commission also fined the chipmaker a full $1.23 billion in another antitrust case related to its dominance in LTE chipsets for smartphones, specifically related to its relationship with Apple and its iPhone.
In both cases Qualcomm is appealing the decisions.
It is also battling a major competition case on its home turf. In 2017, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed charges against Qualcomm, accusing it of using anticompetitive tactics in an attempt to maintain a monopoly in its chip business.
Last year, a U.S. court sided with the FTC, agreeing the chip giant had violated antitrust law and it warned that such behavior would likely continue given Qualcomm’s key role in making modems for next-gen 5G cellular tech. But, again, Qualcomm has appealed, with a decision on the appeal possible this year.
In August, the chipmaker won a partial stay against an earlier court decision that had required it to grant patent licenses to rivals and end its practice of requiring its chip customers sign a patent license before purchasing chips.
“We will continue to vigorously defend ourself in the foregoing matters. However, litigation and investigations are inherently uncertain, and we face difficulties in evaluating or estimating likely outcomes or ranges of possible loss in antitrust and trade regulation investigations in particular,” Qualcomm adds.
Powered by WPeMatico
Huawei files patent infringement lawsuits against Verizon Communications
Huawei has filed two patent infringement lawsuits against Verizon Communications in U.S. District Court.
The Chinese telecommunications equipment giant wants Verizon to compensate it for the use of technology it says are covered by 12 Huawei patents, including ones related to networking, security and video communications. Before the lawsuits were filed, Huawei claims it negotiated with Verizon in a series of meetings from February 2019 to January 21, but was unable to reach a license agreement.
(Disclosure: TechCrunch is owned by Verizon Media, a division of Verizon Communications.)
Huawei technology is used by telecommunication companies around the world. In a press release about the lawsuits, it says it puts about 10% to 15% of its revenue into research and development each year, and has spent about $70 billion on R&D over the last decade, including about $15 billion in 2018 alone.
This resulted in Huawei receiving more than 80,000 patents around the world, including 10,000 in the U.S.
In its filings, Huawei claims Verizon has “profited greatly” from infringing on its patents, noting that Verizon Communication’s total revenue for its wireline division in 2018 was $29.8 billion.
Huawei maintains a close relationship with many other tech companies, including some competitors, through licenses. Huawei says it has received more than $1.4 billion in patent license fees since 2015. In addition to providing customers access to its own technology, Huawei has also paid over $6 billion to license patents from other companies, with more than 100 license agreements signed with vendors in the U.S., Europe, Japan and South Korea.
In its press release, Huawei’s chief legal officer Song Liuping said “Verizon’s products and services have benefitted from patented technology that Huawei developed over many years of research and development.”
“For years now, we have successfully negotiated patent license agreements with many companies. Unfortunately, when no agreement can be reached, we have no choice but to see a legal remedy,” Song added. “This is a common practice in the industry. Huawei is simply asking that Verizon respect Huawei’s investment in research and development by either paying for the use of our patents or refraining from using them in its products and services.”
Rich Young, a Verizon spokesperson, told TechCrunch in an emailed statement that “Huawei’s lawsuit filed overnight, in the very early morning, is nothing more than a PR stunt. This lawsuit is a sneak attack on our company and our nation. The action lacks merit, and we look forward to vigorously defending our company and our nation.”
The patent infringement lawsuit is taking place against the backdrop of Huawei’s legal entanglements with the U.S. government, which claims it is a national security threat, a charge Huawei denies.
Huawei has been on a U.S. trade blacklist since the last May and is suing the government over what it says is an unconstitutional ban on the use of its products by federal agencies and contractors. Huawei’s technology is used by many telecom companies around the world, however, and its close ties with U.S. supply chains were underscored last month when the Defense and Treasury Departments reportedly put pressure on the Commerce Department over the ban.
Powered by WPeMatico
No pan-EU Huawei ban as Commission endorses 5G risk mitigation plan
The European Commission has endorsed a risk mitigation approach to managing 5G rollouts across the bloc — meaning there will be no pan-EU ban on Huawei. Rather it’s calling for Member States to coordinate and implement a package of “mitigating measures” in a 5G toolbox it announced last October and has endorsed today.
“Through the toolbox, the Member States are committing to move forward in a joint manner based on an objective assessment of identified risks and proportionate mitigating measures,” it writes in a press release.
It adds that Member States have agreed to “strengthen security requirements, to assess the risk profiles of suppliers, to apply relevant restrictions for suppliers considered to be high risk including necessary exclusions for key assets considered as critical and sensitive (such as the core network functions), and to have strategies in place to ensure the diversification of vendors”.
The move is another blow for the Trump administration — after the UK government announced yesterday that it would not be banning so-called “high risk” providers from supplying 5G networks.
Instead the UK said it will place restrictions on such suppliers — barring their kit from the “sensitive” ‘core’ of 5G networks, as well as from certain strategic sites (such as military locations), and placing a 35% cap on such kit supplying the access network.
However the US has been amping up pressure on the international community to shut the door entirely on the Chinese tech giant, claiming there’s inherent strategic risk in allowing Huawei to be involved in supplying such critical infrastructure — with the Trump administration seeking to demolish trust in Chinese-made technology.
Next-gen 5G is expected to support a new breed of responsive applications — such as self-driving cars and personalized telemedicine — where risks, should there be any network failure, are likely to scale too.
But the Commission take the view that such risks can be collectively managed.
The approach to 5G security continues to leave decisions on “specific security” measures as the responsibility of Member States. So there’s a possibility of individual countries making their own decisions to shut out Huawei. But in Europe the momentum appears to be against such moves.
“The collective work on the toolbox demonstrates a strong determination to jointly respond to the security challenges of 5G networks,” the EU writes. “This is essential for a successful and credible EU approach to 5G security and to ensure the continued openness of the internal market provided risk-based EU security requirements are respected.”
The next deadline for the 5G toolbox is April 2020, when the Commission expects Member States to have implemented the recommended measures. A joint report on their implementation will follow later this year.
Key actions being endorsed in the toolbox include:
- Strengthen security requirements for mobile network operators (e.g. strict access controls, rules on secure operation and monitoring, limitations on outsourcing of specific functions, etc.);
- Assess the risk profile of suppliers; as a consequence, apply relevant restrictions for suppliers considered to be high risk – including necessary exclusions to effectively mitigate risks – for key assets defined as critical and sensitive in the EU-wide coordinated risk assessment (e.g. core network functions, network management and orchestration functions, and access network functions);
- Ensure that each operator has an appropriate multi-vendor strategy to avoid or limit any major dependency on a single supplier (or suppliers with a similar risk profile), ensure an adequate balance of suppliers at national level and avoid dependency on suppliers considered to be high risk; this also requires avoiding any situations of lock-in with a single supplier, including by promoting greater interoperability of equipment;
The Commission also recommends that Member States should contribute towards increasing diversification and sustainability in the 5G supply chain and co-ordinate on standardization around security objectives and on developing EU-wide certification schemes.
Powered by WPeMatico
Have we hit peak smartphone?
Last Halloween, we broke down some “good news” from a Canalys report: the smartphone industry saw one-percent year-over-year growth — not exactly the sort of thing that sparks strong consumer confidence.
In short, 2019 sucked for smartphones, as did the year before. After what was nearly an ascendant decade, sales petered off globally with few exceptions. Honestly, there’s no need to cherrypick this stuff; the numbers this year have been lackluster at best for a majority of companies in a majority of markets.
For just the most recent example, let’s turn to a report from Gartner that dropped late last month. The numbers focus specifically on the third quarter, but they’re pretty indicative of what we’ve been seeing from the industry of late, with a 0.4 percent drop in sales. It’s a fairly consistent story, quarter after quarter for a couple of years now.
Powered by WPeMatico
Cisco acquires ultra-low latency networking specialist Exablaze
Cisco today announced that it has acquired Exablaze, an Australia-based company that designs and builds advanced networking gear based on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The company focuses on solutions for businesses that need ultra-low latency networking, with a special emphasis on high-frequency trading. Cisco plans to integrate Exablaze’s technology into its own product portfolio.
“By adding Exablaze’s segment leading ultra-low latency devices and FPGA-based applications to our portfolio, financial and HFT customers will be better positioned to achieve their business objectives and deliver on their customer value proposition,” writes Cisco’s head of corporate development Rob Salvagno.
Founded in 2013, Exablaze has offices in Sydney, New York, London and Shanghai. While financial trading is an obvious application for its solutions, the company also notes that it has users in the big data analytics, high-performance computing and telecom space.
Cisco plans to add Exablaze to its Nexus portfolio of data center switches. The company also argues that in addition to integrating Exablaze’s current portfolio, the two companies will work on next-generation switches, with an emphasis on creating opportunities for expanding its solutions into AI and ML segments.
“The acquisition will bring together Cisco’s global reach, extensive sales and support teams, and broad technology and manufacturing base, with Exablaze’s cutting-edge low-latency networking, layer 1 switching, timing and time synchronization technologies, and low-latency FPGA expertise,” explains Exablaze co-founder and chairman Greg Robinson.
Cisco, which has always been quite acquisitive, has now made six acquisitions this year. Most of these were software companies, but with Acacia Communications, it also recently announced its intention to acquire another fabless semiconductor company that builds optical interconnects.
Powered by WPeMatico
John Legere is stepping down as CEO of T-Mobile, succeeded by deputy Mike Sievert on May 1
He’s reportedly not going to take over WeWork, but John Legere is definitely on his way out of the CEO role at T-Mobile, the carrier that is currently merging with SoftBank-controlled Sprint. Today the carrier and Legere confirmed that Mike Sievert — currently T-Mobile’s COO — will succeed Legere as CEO on May 1 of 2020. Legere will stay on the board.
Neither Legere nor T-Mobile commented on what his next move will be, and specifically if this will pave the way for him to take over the top job at WeWork. There had been reports that Legere — something of a turnaround specialist — was being lined up for the job at the very troubled office-space startup, which had to shelve its IPO earlier this year after showing poor financials amid questionable management that not only led to the departure of its founder Adam Neumann as CEO, but a strong devaluation of the company that resulted in SoftBank, as a major creditor, taking control.
The reports of Legere coming in to fix things at WeWork seemed to get refuted quite swiftly. However, the same “sources” that quashed that story also insisted he had “no plans” to leave T-Mobile. With elements of the report in doubt, that could put the WeWork rumors (or thoughts of other SoftBank roles, for that matter) back on the table. We’ve asked Legere directly and will update this post if he replies.
Legere has been with T-Mobile since 2012, where he used his irreverent personality to directly spar with the industry while at the same time position the carrier — which has long trailed bigger competitors like AT&T and Verizon (which owns us) in size — as a growth story and different from the pack (hence the “un-carrier” marketing strategy). The stock price has over that time gone up, and the carrier is currently valued at around $65 billion. (Notably, the stock is down about 1.5% today on the back of this news.)
Sievert will be tasked with continuing the route that Legere set, T-Mobile said, “demonstrating that T-Mobile will remain a disruptive force in US wireless marketplace to benefit consumers.”
“I hired Mike in 2012 and I have great confidence in him. I have mentored him as he took on increasingly broad responsibilities, and he is absolutely the right choice as T-Mobile’s next CEO,” said Legere in a statement. “Mike is well prepared to lead T-Mobile into the future. He has a deep understanding of where T-Mobile has been and where it needs to go to remain the most innovative company in the industry. I am extremely proud of the culture and enthusiasm we have built around challenging the status quo and our ongoing commitment to putting customers first.”
“The Un-carrier culture, which all our employees live every day, will not change,” Sievert said in a separate statement. “T-Mobile is not just about one individual. Our company is built around an extraordinarily capable management team and thousands of talented, committed, and customer-obsessed employees. Going forward, my mission is to build on T-Mobile’s industry-leading reputation for empowering employees to deliver an outstanding customer experience and to position T-Mobile not only as the leading mobile carrier, but as one of the most admired companies in America.”
Regardless of whether this is a sign that SoftBank indeed has a job lined up for Legere at one of its other portfolio companies, such as WeWork, the changing of the guard makes some sense, as the merger with Sprint would leave a question mark over who would lead the combined business. The two companies were reportedly close to releasing a management line-up for the merged business earlier this year, but that has yet to happen. The merger is due to be completed early next year.
Powered by WPeMatico
Huawei calls hackers to Munich for secret bug bounty meeting
Chinese tech giant Huawei has asked some of the world’s best phone hackers to a secret meeting in Munich later this month as the company tries to curry favor with global governments, TechCrunch has learned.
Sources with knowledge of the November 16 meeting said Huawei will privately present its new bug bounty program, which would allow researchers to get financial rewards for submitting security vulnerabilities. The sources said the bug bounty will be focused on past and future mobile devices, as well as its new mobile operating system, HarmonyOS, Huawei’s Android competitor.
Other phone makers, including Apple, Google and Samsung, also have bug bounties.
The move comes at a time of increased pressure on Huawei over its links to the Chinese government. Huawei has denied U.S.-led claims that it could be forced to spy on behalf of Beijing. But that hasn’t stopped the federal government from imposing sanctions and obstacles from operating in the United States. That pressure has led companies like Google from pulling its support for Android, which Huawei relies on for its phones, prompting the tech giant to find or build alternatives.
One source described the event as similar to a secret meeting hosted by Apple in August, in which the tech giant handed its most prized security researchers special “dev” iPhones to hack and find security weaknesses.
The source said that Huawei’s bug bounty meeting was likely a way to show governments that it’s willing to work with hackers and security researchers to bolster the security of its products.
Huawei, which also makes networking equipment for telecom networks, came under fire by U.K. authorities earlier this year for failing to address “serious and systematic defects” in its software at a time it’s trying to prove its technologies do not pose a national security threat.
Chase Skinner, a spokesperson for Huawei, did not respond to a request for comment.
Powered by WPeMatico