Industry News

Chinese telecommunications vendor ZTE has announced that it has reached a deal with the US Commerce Department over the trade sanctions that threatened to put the powerful conglomerate out of business.

Chinese Mobile International, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chinese telecommunications incumbent China Mobile, has announced it plans to expand its operations in Japan in preparation for the forthcoming Olympic Games which will be held in Tokyo in 2020.

Chinese telecommunications vendor Huawei has vehemently denied that it collected data from Facebook users after the Silicon Valley social media colossus confirmed that it granted the Chinese smartphone manufacturer with access to user information.

South Korean conglomerate Samsung has been ordered by a US federal court to pay Apple $533m in a patent dispute case that has been ongoing now for seven years. Samsung has been found guilty of copying the iPhone design and a federal court jury has now awarded an additional $5m in damages for a pair of patented functions to be paid to the US technology colossus.

Toshiba has formally announced that it has finally completed the protracted sale of its prized chip unit. The Japanese conglomerate sold its memory chip business to an investment consortium for a fee of $21bn.

US President Donald Trump has offered ZTE a deal which will allow them to resume trade with the United States - after the Chinese telecommunications vendor was hit with a draconian ban by the US Department of Commerce that threatened its very existence.

Nokia's Chinese subsidiary, Nokia Shanghai Bell (NSB), has won the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) optical transport network (OTN) project. The deployment will cover SGCC Beijing and Tianjin and will help SGCC to smoothly evolve the transport network from 10Gb/s to beyond 100Gb/s, based on Nokia's in-house innovative PSE chipset.

Japanese mobile operator NTT Docomo and Chinese telecommunications vendor Huawei have conducted 5G trials.  Both companies have claimed to have proved integrated access backhaul (IAB) technology can significantly improve mmWave coverage and capacity during 5G trials.

Australian operator Optus has confirmed that it will cut its workforce by 400 due to increased competition caused by a move from one of its rivals to introduce unlimited 4G data plans. The job cuts are expected to be made in the next few months - and Optus CEO Allen Lew has informed staff that the measures are being implemented in an effort to future-proof the company and fund future investment.

All three of South Korea's telecommunication operators are expected to move away from its traditional flat-rate pricing system in favor of usage-based tariffs - in an effort to generate the revenue it needs to prepare for the 5G.