Facebook's march to augmented reality

The big theme coming out of Facebook's recent F8 Developer Conference in San Jose, California was augmented reality (AR). Mark Zuckerberg told the audience that the human desire for community has been weakened over time and believes that social media could play a role in strengthening these ties. Augmented reality begins as an add-on to Facebook Stories, its answer to Snapchat. Users simply take a photo and then use the app to place an overlay...

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Big shifts in the U.S. mobile market – Part 1

It has been a very eventful start to the year for U.S. mobile operators. As the first quarter financials reports have rolled in over the past two weeks, it is clear the two top tier players, AT&T and Verizon, are increasingly under pressure from the No.3 and No.4 contenders, Sprint and T-Mobile US. All four operators offer virtually the same set of services, delivered to same handsets with roughly equivalent levels of performance in most places....

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IDC reports China smarphone sales up 1%

According to market research firm IDC in its latest Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, 104.1 million smartphones were shipped to China in the first quarter of 2017, up 1% year on year, with the low growth in part due to the high inventory levels from the previous quarter.IDC notes that the first quarter was also relatively quiet in terms of new products, with few launches aside from Huawei's new P10, P10 Plus and Honor V9, which combined with strong...

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Nokia selected for digital city project in Chengdu

Nokia has announced a strategic Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China's Tianfu New Area Chengdu Administrative Committee under which the parties will collaborate on establishing a new digital city that will include the construction of data centre and related telecom infrastructure.The new digital city project in the Chengdu prefecture of Sichuan province will also involve the deployment of a trial network for internet of things (IoT), the...

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Cisco develops analytics for Mexico's Conectado

Cisco Mexico announced that it has developed the Country Digitization Analytics Platform (CDAP) designed to support the implementation of Mexico Conectado, a program of the Mexican government's Secretariat of Communications and Transportation (SCT).The Cisco CDAP platform is designed to provide the SCT with analytics information for usage of the initiative, in addition to raw data relating to the usage of the network.Mexico Conectado is a program...

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China Mobile, ARM, Cavium and Enea Validate NFV test cases

China Mobile, the largest mobile carrier in China with over 850 million subscribers, ARM, Cavium and Enea announced an agreement covering collaboration in the China Mobile Open NFV Testlab leveraging Enea's OPNFV-based commercial NFV Core platform and Cavium's ARM-based ThunderX workload-optimised data centre server processors.Through the agreement, China Mobile's Open NFV Testlab will host the platform as part of the operator's Telecom Integrated...

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Transition Networks showcases fibre-to-the-desk

Minneapolis-based Transition Networks, a provider of data network integration solutions and a company of Communications Systems, announced it is showcasing fibre-to-the-desk connectivity solutions designed for enterprise and government network applications during Dell EMC World 2017 in Las Vegas.At the event, Transition Networks will introduce a range of new products for implementing fibre into Ethernet networks, including a fibre network interface...

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Viavi enhances CellAdvisor base station analyser with NB-IoT testing capability

Viavi Solutions, a supplier of network and service enablement solutions and optical security and performance products, has announced its CellAdvisor Base Station Analyzer provides support for the signal analysis required for narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) connectivity.The new test capability is designed to address the needs of service providers seeking to test the overlay IoT infrastructure that must co-exist with the traditional mobile communications...

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