Tech & Telecom news — Sep 4, 2018
PRODUCTS & SERVICES
Connectivity
Japanese operators are a success case of value creation in telecoms, with the 3 top carriers having added $112bn in market cap since 2014, by growing revenues even while lowering prices (exploiting more data consumption). So stock declines on Government’s push for lower tariffs have always been followed by rebounds (Story)
Applications
Like Facebook, Twitter is on a battle against abuse and misinformation in its social network, which has become a barrier for growth, as brands don’t like to show ads close to “bad” content. The problem is that other users are complaining that these actions violate free speech, and this is leading to some internal stress (Story)
Meanwhile, political pressure doesn’t give signs to be decreasing, and executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter will actually appear tomorrow before the US Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss potential legislative actions to address the use of internet platforms to distribute spurious political content (Story)
Advertising
Amazon keeps on a collision course with Google and Facebook in the online advertising market. Their numbers are not small anymore ($2.2bn in 1Q18, and a +130% yoy growth), and the potential is huge, due to the large amount of digital interactions (with shopping intentions) that customers have with the company (Story)
Meanwhile, in India, the fight between the two digital ad leaders Google and Facebook is heating up, with Facebook’s sales now close to Google’s, even after having arrived in the market later. The reason behind this seems to be that Facebook’s online ad platform is easier to use, e.g. by relying more on visual elements (Story)
Blockchain
Microsoft wants to use blockchain to aggregate data across different companies and services and store it in its Azure cloud environment with a standardized format that facilitates its analysis. So they’re connecting their blockchain services with several popular apps, like Office 365, Salesforce, SAP and Twitter (Story)
HARDWARE ENABLERS
Networks
Intel and Ericsson just demonstrated a 5G live data call over the 39 GHz using the recently approved 5G-NR standard. This is considered as a sign of how close 5G commercial services are to reality in the US, as the 4 main North American carriers are planning to use the 39 GHz band for their 5G services (Story)
SOFTWARE ENABLERS
Virtual assistants
Broadband routers incorporating the Alexa virtual assistant have been one of the highlights from the recent IFA Consumer Electronics event in Berlin, according to press reports. Both Huawei and Netgear presented devices that transform a router into a smart speaker, taking advantage of their position at customers’ homes (Story)
Automation
Trading algorithms may be causing large stock market swings, according to an analysis by a company that runs this kind of computer models. The study links this to bursts of “stop-loss” orders, or directives to sell a position once the price falls below a certain level, aimed to limit losses, that sometimes get synchronized (Story)
Privacy
The “Five Eyes” (an alliance of the secret services from US, UK, Canada, Australia & New Zealand) is demanding tech companies to build backdoor access to users’ encrypted data, and threatening with measures to enforce compliance. So the debate is on about who’s the actual threat to citizens’ privacy (Story)

