Industry News

KT Corp. said its satellite-operating subsidiary, KT SAT, has successfully conducted the world’s first 5G data transmission with a satellite connection.

Nokia announced that it is collaborating with Hitachi Kokusai Electric on local 5G and private wireless LTE solutions for industrial and government customers. Spectrum for local 5G will be released in Japan at the end of 2019 for enterprise use.

US officials have agreed to grant licenses to several firms to provide components to Chinese tech giant Huawei, which faces sanctions imposed over national security concerns.

2019 marks the first year of global 5G commercial adoption. On June 6, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) officially issued 5G licenses to China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Broadcasting Network for commercial use, marking China’s official entry into the 5G era. On November 1, China's three mobile carriers began offering 5G mobile services to the public, accelerating the full commercial deployment of 5G.

Nokia has been selected by New Zealand operator Spark for its roster of 5G suppliers. The deal, announced yesterday, will see Nokia’s 5G technology deployed across New Zealand as part of Spark’s 5G network, delivering faster speeds, enhanced response times and more bandwidth to Spark’s customers.

ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, in partnership with China Telecom and China Unicom, has today  completed the network verification based on the co-build co-share mode in the commercial 5G environment, launching the world's first NSA co-build co-share sites of 1.8 G/2.1 G/3.5 G in Hangzhou, China that fully verifies the large-scale commercial capabilities of the 5G co-build co-share mode, and lays a solid foundation for greatly reducing initial investment in 5G and efficiently promoting 5G constructions.

According to the latest IDC Worldwide Semiannual Security Spending Guide, spending on security hardware, services, and software in Asia/Pacific is expected to reach USD 16.4 billion in 2019, an increase of 20.01% over previous year. IDC expects investment on security related products and services to grow at a five-year CAGR of 20.1% over the forecast period (2018-23) and reach USD 34 billion by 2023.

Bourbon, a world leader in marine services for offshore oil and gas, has signed a contract committing more than 100 offshore support vessels (OSVs) to Inmarsat’s Fleet Xpress, the maritime broadband service that combines the speed of Ka-band with continuous back up from Inmarsat’s FleetBroadband operating on L-band.

Softbank has recently announced plans to merge its subsidiary Z Holdings, known formerly as Yahoo Japan, with mobile messaging giant and Whatsapp rival Line to form a Japanese internet juggernaut that would not only be a leader in data and AI, but also be able to compete with some of the world’s largest and richest technology companies, mainly in the United States and China.

Global data analytics company Experian has recently announced a strategic investment partnership with Mumbai-based mobile marketing startup Vserv that will give Experian an important minority stake as well as access to new telecom-based customer information provided by Vserv.