In conjunction with Samsung Networks, Jio has built the world’s largest green-field and all IP based 4G LTE network, which supports over 340 million LTE subscribers by August 2019. At the event, the two companies demonstrate new business opportunities using 5G NSA mode, together with advanced 4G LTE and 5G technology used in combination as a dual-connected mode network. These will reveal how innovations from the latest technology can possibly benefit consumers, enterprises and the society.

 

“The unprecedented data growth and the mobile internet adoption and revolution that Jio brought to India has fundamentally changed the life of every Indian,” said Mathew Oommen, President of Reliance Jio Infocomm. “We as Jio, working closely with key partners like Samsung will ensure that we continue to help India leapfrog traditional technologies by advancing the existing 4G all-IP infrastructure and leverage the end-to-end fiber, 5G, and IoT ecosystems towards a digital infrastructure platform. This digital platform will deliver on the aspirations of all Indians, our businesses, and the emerging digital society that is fundamental to accelerating the digital economy and ensuring digital freedom for India.”

 

“Having superior LTE networks is a key asset for operators in moving towards the 5G era, and Jio has reached that compelling competency,” said Paul Kyungwhoon Cheun, Executive Vice President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung has been working in close cooperation with Jio to bring a digital transformation including the transition to 4G throughout India for over seven years. Samsung and Jio will continue to join forces in bringing next generation innovation across the country, harnessing the full 5G potential in driving further growth of a ‘Digital India’.”

 

5G Use Cases for Digital India

 

Samsung and Jio mutually highlight immersive and live applications of 5G that will demonstrate the value that 5G has to offer in India. The trial will feature solutions from Samsung Networks’ 5G product portfolio, such as its 3.5GHz solution for 5G Massive MIMO Unit (MMU), its 28GHz Access Unit (AU) and CPE device, its virtualized radio access (vRAN) and core, and 5G mobile devices. Demonstrations will include:

 

- Virtual Classroom allows attendees to watch 360-degree virtual lecture taken from a classroom in Jio’s Reliance Corporate Park (RCP) in Mumbai.

- Massive Full High-Definition (HD) Content Streaming shows FHD video streaming on multiple smartphones (Galaxy S10 5G) simultaneously and 4K video streaming using multiple 5G tablets, which will showcase the unparalleled entertainment experience powered by 5G.

 

4G Use Cases for Public Safety Communications

 

Jio and Samsung are likely to demonstrate a live “public safety network over LTE” featuring Mission-Critical-Push-To-X (MCPTX) communication. Conceptualized as “OneNet”, a potential India’s Emergency Communication Network, this will empower first responders to connect with each other using a broadband network in a controlled and “geo-fenced” manner.

 

Public Safety LTE (PS-LTE) using MCPTX goes beyond what was possible through legacy technologies wherein they were limited to providing voice-oriented communications. By highlighting the use of LTE for real-time streaming of videos and high-definition images of scenes during emergencies, it enables multi-lateral communications to be connected at once to transfer video, images and voice all at once using multicast technology. As allowing the first responders and control towers to engage in highly effective communications, PS-LTE is enabled to make better decisions during time-critical situations.

 

As Jio has already built the largest and most advanced LTE network nationwide reaching every corner of Pan-India, MCPTX for PS-LTE is among the most effective ways to maximize the current LTE network to serve public safety for over 1.3 billion people. Samsung is one of the first companies to launch a 5G commercial network in Korea and the U.S. in the first half of 2019 using its end-to-end 5G solutions varying from chipsets, radios, core network solutions and smartphones for both mid-band and mmWave.

 

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The program, which Hyundai said included autonomous, connected and electric vehicles, comes after the company and two of its affiliates announced an investment of $1.6 billion in a partnership with U.S. self-driving tech firm Aptiv. Hyundai's plan also obtained a boost from the South Korean government, which said on Tuesday that it plans to spend 1.7 trillion won from 2021-27 to boost autonomous vehicle technology.

 

The government is expecting Hyundai to launch a nationwide service of fully autonomous cars to fleet customers in 2024 and the general public by 2027. This thrust is an important part of a blueprint for future cars President Moon Jae-in announced at an event at Hyundai Motor's research centre near Seoul.

 

The government said it was making a feasibility review for its proposed funding boost, which would probably include parts, systems and infrastructure. It said Korea lags behind in self-driving car software and key parts like sensors and chips, regardless of the country's advanced, fifth-generation mobile data network.

 

South Korea also said it would plan a regulatory and legal framework to assure the safety of autonomous cars by 2024. ''We will actively transition from combustion-engine cars to future cars,'' Industry Minister Sung Yoon-mo said at a media briefing on Tuesday.

 

The government also targets to lay the technological and legal groundwork for the demonstration of flying cars in 2025. Hyundai Motor's executive vice chairman Euisun Chung has said the company is thinking about developing flying cars, which could be commercialized well before the most advanced self-driving cars.

 

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Flashtalking CEO John Nardon said, “Our foundation is incredibly strong heading into the fourth quarter and the year ahead as we continue to build our global business.”

 

John added, “We’ve always operated profitably, while continuing to expand in all regions of the world and adding new offices by the quarter. Our clients and partners are excited by our momentum, benefiting from our meaningful strategic partnerships, such as ours with Adobe, and the constant evolution of our product suite and best of breed solutions. We also are seeing significant growth from existing clients who have been able to measure meaningful improvements in their return on media spend.”

 

Flashtalking’s Flashpoints in 2019

 

Many existing clients have considerably deepened their commitment to Flashtalking due to its ability to consistently drive high return on media spend (ROMS). As the only independent ad serving platform without media bias, Flashtalking unifies advertiser data with a privacy-friendly, MRC-certified, fully-encrypted measurement solution.

 

Moreover, Flashtalking successfully won a number of global advertisers who moved from distressed competitors. The company has accelerated primary ad server migration with a streamlined operational process executed by dedicated onboarding teams, making it easier than ever for advertisers to switch ad servers. These wins underscore the buy side’s desire for alternatives to Sizmek, facing an uncertain future post-acquisition by Amazon, and the Google stack, primarily with the deprecation of the Google ID.

 

John continued, “Flashtalking stands alone in our unique capabilities to help marketers and their agencies to measure and improve media performance across channels, at scale. We provide award-winning support backed by hands-on training to global agency teams. In fact, later this quarter, we will officially unveil our Flashtalking Certification Program, a major training and continuing education initiative designed to help clients navigate the ever-changing digital landscape with best-in-class creative solutions and campaign management tools. Be on the lookout for the new product enhancements, additional international office openings, key partnerships and strategic integrations we will be announcing over the coming months.”

 

A different remarkable 2019 milestone was Flashtalking’s debut of universal frequency signaling, a new feature that resolves a significant pain point for advertisers. This new capability allows Flashtalking to merge frequency management at the same time across all buying endpoints. The enhancement was launched with a number of major partners already on board, particularly Adobe Advertising Cloud, MediaMath and Amobee as inaugural partners.

 

In the upcoming months the company is likely to publicize deepened partnerships across the adtech ecosystem, its redesigned Flashtalking Decision Tree, and continued global expansion.

 

At the moment, Flashtalking platform leads the market with innovative products and services to ensure creative relevance and actionable insights all over channels and formats, powered by unique cookieless tracking, data orchestration and algorithmic multi-touch attribution. They support consumers at the crossroads where data, personalized creative and unbiased measurement intersect with expertise, service and a deep partner ecosystem to drive successful digital marketing.

 

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Data analytics leads to predictive analytics using accumulated data to forecast what might occur under certain situations. The estimations are developed from historical data and rely on humans to question data, authenticate patterns, create and then test the assumptions. These kinds of assumptions take for granted that the future will follow the same patterns. “What if” assumptions are developed through human understanding of the past, and the predictive competence is limited by the volume, time and cost restrictions of human data analysts.

 

Machine learning is a continuance of the perceptions around predictive analytics, except that the AI system is able to make assumptions, test them and study autonomously. AI machine learning has the ability to asses and reassess data to foresee every possible customer-to-product match, at a speed and competence no human could attain. AI concerns the selection of the ideal tools for the job.

 

There is a false impression that predictive analytics and machine learning are similar thing. This is far from the truth.

 

The science of predictive analytics can create perceptions of the future with substantial accuracy. Using state-of-the-art predictive analytics tools and models, any manufacturer can use past data together with current information to dependably forecast trends and behaviors days or years into the future.

 

With predictive analytics, manufacturers can find and take full advantage of patterns contained within data set in order to uncover risks and discover opportunities. For example, models can be designed to see the relationships between many behavior issues. These models aid in the appraisal of either the potential or the risk posed by a specific set of conditions, allowing for informed decision-making across a number of categories of supply chain and procurement procedures.

 

There are Classification models, that predict class membership, and Regression models that calculate a number. These models are made up of algorithms, which undertake the data mining and statistical analysis to figure out trends and patterns in the data. Predictive analytics software solutions have algorithms that can be utilized to make prognostic models. These algorithms are defined as classifiers, which identify the series of categories that contains the data.

 

There are multiple predictive models that are generally used, such as decision trees.

 

Decision trees are a simple yet efficient form of analysis of multiple variables. They are created by algorithms that recognize respective ways of separating data into segment branches. Decision trees distinguish data into subsets based on groupings of input variables, facilitating the understanding of a path of decisions.

 

Regression is another model. Regression analysis determines the relationship between variables, finding substantial patterns in large separate data sets and how they relate to each other.

 

Neural networks are developed akin to the action of neurons in the human brain.  These networks are a collection of deep learning technologies. They're most frequently used to solve intricate pattern recognition problems. They are perfect at coping with nonlinear relationships in data; and they work well when specific variables are unknown. A neural network learns the expected output for a given input from training datasets. They are adaptive and amend themselves as they learn from successive inputs.

 

Predictive analytics are used in the banking and financial services industry. They are used to diagnose and reduce fraud, determine market risk, identify prospects and more.

 

Because cybersecurity is at the top of every manufacturer’s agenda, predictive analytics plays a crucial part in security. Security institutions, as a rule, use predictive analytics to detect incongruities, discover fraud, understand consumer activities and improve data security. Manufacturers are using predictive analytics to better understand who buys what and where? These questions can be quickly answered with the right predictive models and data sets. This helps manufacturers to plan ahead and make products based on consumer trends.

 

There is a good relationship between predictive analytics and machine learning, but they are undoubtedly diverse concepts. Machine learning is much larger than predictive analytics.

 

Machine learning is an AI procedure exactly where algorithms are given data and asked to process it without predetermined rules. They use what they learn from their flaws to enhance future operation. Because data sustains machine learning, the results are at their best when the machine has access to great quantities of data to improve its algorithm.

 

There are two common types of machine learning. One is supervised where a training dataset is given to let the machine understand what kind of output is desired. The categorized data provides information on the parameters of the desired categories and permits the algorithm to decide how to tell them apart. Supervised learning can be used to teach an algorithm to differentiate spam mail from normal correspondence.

 

With unsupervised learning, no training data is given. The algorithm evaluates a mass of data for patterns or shared elements. Sizeable volumes of unstructured data can then be organized and grouped. Unsupervised learning is utilized in intelligent profiling to determine parallels between a manufacturer’s most valuable customers.

 

A couple of machine learning applications are the self-driving car; online recommendation offers by online retailers like Amazon; and knowing what customers are saying about your company on social media.

 

Machine learning and natural language processing is now being implemented to predictive analytics. The system uses information submitted in natural language. Subsequently, the system gets better at comparing results and supplying the ideal conclusions. The subsequent information is used for predictive analytics. Together all of these technologies and techniques give constructive information for forecasting, planning, predicting and testing theories and hypotheses for business growth and success.

 

The utilization of predictive analytics and machine learning has been expanding for some time now. They quench the demand for personalized service delivered more effectively. They can be modified to match a project’s scale, making this flexibility a crucial part of an executive’s digital tool box.

 

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That's in line with a leaked slide that comes courtesy of AdoredTV, which details that Intel will reduce the prices of its processor lines rather significantly, so much so that it could come with a $3bn cost.

 

But this kind of financial smack around the chops could be one way for Intel to ensure its Core and Xeon processors remain at a price that is competitive with AMD; we doubt the chipmaker would likely undercut Team Red, but cheaper Core CPUs would surely make the decision to go AMD or Intel more tricky once one balances cost and performance ratios.

 

As AdoredTV pointed out, Intel has the ''financial horsepower'' to take this type of revenue hit, as its long standing dominance in the chip world means that it certainly is not short on cash reserves; while Team Red isn't destitute, it doesn't have the net income of its main rival.

 

In the event that the rumours are real, we'd place a cautious bet that the biggest price cuts is going to be levied at Intel's Xeon data centre CPUs, as that is where the chipmaker is at its most dominant. But the rise of AMD's EPYC Rome 7-nanometre processors gives a new challenge to that arena, and one that Intel likely cannot sit idly by and ignore.

 

Sure, Intel might cook up some chips that offer substantially more efficiency than Team Red's rivals, but that's not simple to do; Intel hasn't precisely had an easy route to the 10nm process node basically. As such, in the short-term a price reduction pretty makes sense.

 

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The Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL phones took the main stage at a launching event here. They boast astrophotography-grade cameras, a better-integrated Google Assistant system, and such AI-powered features as a recorder that transcribes English speech in real time offline. Starting at $799, the new Pixels are also billed as the first smartphones with radar sensors, which facilitate gesture control.

 

''If Google's Android licensees didn't take Google's hardware endeavors seriously before, they will do now,'' said Geoff Blaber of CCS Insights, adding that ''the big story'' is the Pixel's expanded distribution through all major U.S. carriers.

 

Google also advanced smart-home offerings, now brought under the Nest brand, including a new smart speaker and mesh Wi-Fi router. The tech giant teased speech-recognition-enabled Pixel Buds wireless earbuds due out upcoming spring. Together these gadgets shape an essential strategy for Google to both leverage and keep users close to core products: the artificial intelligence powering the devices and the services accessed through them. South Korean competitor Samsung expanded a tie-up with Microsoft in August, embracing a similar strategy of interdevice connectivity to encourage user stickiness.

 

The search giant likewise has a 5G phone in test production, believed to be rolled out preceding rival Apple's, sources told the Nikkei Asian Review last week. This would make Google the first handset maker outside Asia to have a smartphone product with fifth-generation technology built in. The Pixel 4 launch also comes as Google ends Huawei's ''backdoor'' access to its Play Store, as the Chinese company remains on Washington's export control blacklist. So users of new Huawei handsets will no longer be able to download Google apps - a strong deterrent for consumers in markets outside China.

 

''With Huawei facing huge challenges, particularly in Europe, now is the time for Google if it's serious about moving the needle with Pixel,'' CCS' Blaber said.

 

Just as with Huawei, Pixel phones are admired for their camera capabilities. The new Pixel 4 adds a second rear camera and an improved Night Sight mode. So far the U.S. remains Pixel's main market, where Huawei is shut out but Apple and Samsung are way ahead by share. But Google is also making some headway. The Pixel doubled its share of the U.S. smartphone market to just about 5% in the first half of 2019, according to Strategy Analytics.

 

''More models and deeper distribution sparked record growth,'' Strategy Analytics' Neil Mawston said in a report. ''Alarm bells will be ringing at Samsung, LG, Motorola and elsewhere.''

 

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Augury, a company situated in Israel and the U.S., is transforming the conversation around machine health by combining advanced sensor technology, artificial intelligence, and reliability expertise to present accurate and actionable insights for a full ecosystem of production line assets. In accordance with Augury, every machine has a special acoustic fingerprint. By listening thoroughly and applying advanced analytics, manufacturers and machine builders can estimate faults before they occur.

 

“We are a machine health solution that makes sure machines that matter are always running for our customers,” said Jonathan Biagiotti, product marketing manager at Augury. “And the way we do this is by vibration analysis, temperature data analysis, and magnetic field data analytics.”

 

Augury was founded in 2011 by Saar Yoskovitz and Gal Shaul. Shaul was working for a medical device company at the time, and would have to fly out to customer locations to solve equipment that could have been corrected remotely with software and acoustics, the two concluded. So they collaborated to create Augury.

 

At first, the company developed a portable hand-held diagnostic tool with capabilities of Category IV vibration analysis. Recently, leveraging the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and AI, Augury rolled out a product called Halo, a wireless platform that offers real-time and continuous advanced diagnostics that alerts personnel to even the slightest change in a machine’s health status, and delivers a detailed malfunction analysis.

 

“We give actionable insights to customers,” Biagiotti explained. “It’s not just, ‘you have high vibration,’ rather, ‘you have a problem on the drive end of motor which is a moderate misalignment problem, and we recommend you laser align the machine.’ It is specific and actionable and the people reading the results don’t have to be a vibrational analyst.”

 

That’s because Augury has certified Cat III and IV vibration analysts on staff who tag data and identify what the fault means. They are available to the customer as part of a turnkey service that includes reliability consulting.

 

Augury experts collect information on the magnetic field - one thing the company has pioneered, Biagiotti said. Plus, the algorithms are more sophisticated than what is currently out there for machine learning applications. “We are not just looking at vibration, but dozens of calculated values…The signals give an early heads-up when things change and detect anomalies based on past behavior.”

 

The goal is to check out the health of the system to improve the overall performance at the plant and in addition the larger supply chain. Augury executives recognize that machine health is about solving a bigger problem.

 

To illustrate, a beer manufacturer gets a pump because they need it to move beer from one place to another, but they are more interested in the performance of the pump vs. the maintenance of it. To that end, the company gave the example of a beer bottler that saved three hours of downtime, 180,000 bottles of production loss and $360,000 in retail value by knowing a motor was going to fail, before it did so – thanks to Augury’s cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering.

 

Halo has web and mobile dashboards that can be looked at on a PC, laptop, iPhone or Android providing KPIs and plant performance metrics. The company can also push text messages and e-mails to people to attentive them if there is a change to the status of a machine. Halo can also integrate with a company’s existing work order management system or computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).

 

Augury works with manufacturers in the food and beverage, pharmaceutical, CPG, water and wastewater treatment and power industries, and forms partnerships with OEMs.

 

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The study was compiled by U.S. PIRG Education Fund, a public interest group, the nonprofit Environment America Research and Policy Center and Frontier Group, a clean energy organization. Battery-powered electric buses minimize diesel exhaust emissions and pollution and discharge far fewer greenhouses gasses that contribute to global warming than do diesel and natural gas-powered buses, proponents say.

 

Transportation is the nation's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for just about one-third of emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But the emerging electric bus technology is not without its pitfalls, said the report which looked at six U.S. test locations. Among them, Chicago Transit Authority's two electric buses were able to deal with cold weather, and the agency plans full-fleet electrification by 2040, it said.

 

But buses evaluated in 2018 in Albuquerque, New Mexico had shorter-than-expected battery life, insufficient range and a sensitivity to extreme heat, it said. ''We obviously want to see more electric buses on the road, but we're not going to say places that have tested them have had 100% success rates with no challenges,'' said Matthew Casale, a transportation specialist with the U.S. PIRG Education Fund.

 

''Places that are thinking about making a change now can be more informed about what they are facing.''

 

While some U.S. communities are looking to replace diesel buses, many transit agencies are cautious out of concerns that electric vehicles have limited range and are unproven on a mass scale. A report circulated in May by the World Resources Institute, a global research organization, found cities face technological, financial and institutional barriers to electrifying bus fleets.

 

Cities don't know enough about the buses' limitations and maintenance, and transit agencies may be unwilling to pay for buses that are more expensive up front but cheaper to operate than conventional buses, WRI said. ''Critics out there say the buses are not ready for prime time because of technology hurdles or cost hurdles or education hurdles,'' Casale said.

 

''At the end of the day, electric buses really provide significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and exposure to harmful pollutants,'' he said. ''It's certainly something worth pursuing.''

 

About half of America's close to 70,000 transit buses and 95% of its school buses run on diesel, the report said. Among major cities, New York City has announced plans to convert public buses to an all-electric fleet by 2040.

 

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“China is the ultimate conundrum,” says Stanford president emeritus and MIPS Computer Systems founder John Hennessy. “It’s a large market that U.S. companies need access to, together with being what will become a major technical competitor. We have never faced that.”

 

The combination of silicon manufacturing into two major foundries raises the threat level, pointed out Diane Bryant, former Intel and Google Cloud executive. “You really just have TSMC and Samsung left,” she said. “And TSMC is in Taiwan, so you have to be thinking about China and the threat to Taiwan, and what will happen to TSMC.”

 

China will take control Taiwan “the same time North Korea takes over South Korea,” quipped Hennessy, giving it control over most of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing capabilities. “What do you do tomorrow if TSMC and Samsung are off limits?” he asked his fellow panel members.

 

“You can’t go to Global Foundries,” which indeed has some U.S. semiconductor manufacturing capability, said Bryant, “unless you really want Moore’s Law to be dead.” (Global Foundries recently stopped developing the most advanced semiconductor processes.)

 

Rodrigo Liang, CEO of SambaNova Systems, argued that solving this problem can only be done at the level of the U.S. government. Pradeep Sindhu, founder of Juniper Networks and founder and CEO of Fungible, conformed. “The U.S. government needs an industrial policy,” he said, “and it doesn’t have one.”

 

The foundry issue is a long-term problem. Maybe a nearer term question is how the improving power of China’s tech industry will impact U.S.-based companies. “China is talking about becoming tech independent, becoming net exporters,” said Bryant. “We can talk about how many years [it will take], but it is inevitable.” Companies in China will catch up for various grounds, panelists indicated. For one, said Sindhu, they are very hungry to learn.

 

For another, said Navin Chaddha, managing director of the Mayfield Fund, China’s big market gives Chinese companies a boost. “Usually innovation happens when you are close to a market,” he said. To date, the U.S. companies and Samsung have benefitted from the boom” in the Chinese tech market, but now “we are seeing Chinese companies benefitting from their local market… and China is the biggest market when it comes to broadband users.”

 

A solution?

 

“Invest in that market,” says Chaddha. That strategy is not without pitfalls, Hennessy indicated. “What happens to your technology when you ship it over there?” he asked. “To the extent that we can protect it, we will,” Sindhu said. Hennessy remained skeptical. “Just wait until you sign the deal and send it over,” he said.

 

“This isn’t a redo of semiconductor wars with Japan in the 80s,” he concluded.  “This is a country that has scale, that has entrepreneurial zeal. They will give us a run for the money.”

 

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“We are not taking a pre-emptive decision to ban any actor, or any company,” German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told a news conference in Berlin on Monday.

 

The United States has piled pressure on its friends to exclude Huawei, the major telecoms equipment vendor with a global market share of 28%, saying its gear consisted of ‘back doors’ that would most likely allow China to spy on other countries. German operators are all customers of Huawei and have warned that excluding the Chinese vendor would add years of delays and billions of dollars in costs to launching 5G networks.

 

The Shenzhen-based company has refused the accusations by Washington, which imposed export controls on Huawei in May, hobbling its smartphone business and raising questions over whether the Chinese company can maintain its market lead. U.S. officials have also suggested that, under China’s national intelligence law, all citizens and companies are expected to collaborate in espionage efforts. Officials said Germany’s security catalogue was due to be published shortly, confirming a previous decision to keep a level playing field for suppliers to next-generation networks that will power lightning fast mobile broadband services or run ‘smart’ factories, offices and cities.

 

Along with billions of devices, sensors and cameras expected to be hooked up, 5G networks will be a lot more widely used than their predecessors. At the same time, the fact that 5G networks rely more on software that can be easily updated makes it harder to keep track of cyber threats. The German rules come after the European Union last week informed of the risk of increased cyber attacks on 5G networks by state-backed actors. A report compiled by member states stopped short, however, of singling out China as a threat.

 

Network operators Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE), Vodafone (VOD.L) and Telefonica Deutschland (O2Dn.DE) are going to be required to identify and apply enhanced security standards to essential network elements, the Handelsblatt daily reported earlier, citing the draft rulebook. More broadly, suppliers should be certified as trustworthy, giving customers legal recourse to exclude them and seek damages if proof is found that equipment had been used for spying or sabotage.

 

Certification of critical equipment would for the time being have to be attained from Germany’s cybersecurity authority, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). Those requirements were in line with key ground rules set back in March ahead of the drafting of the full set of rules by the Federal Network Regulator (BNetzA) and the BSI.

 

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Samsung is in fact already in Vietnam manufacturing its various product lines. The Samsung Electronics factory in Thai Nguyen, in northern Vietnam, employs at least 60,000 people. It churns out more mobile phones than any other facility in the world. It and Samsung Electronics’ other factories in Vietnam produce almost a third of the firm’s global output. The company has invested a cumulative $17bn in the country.

 

The 5G technology is a must in the future especially for a country like Vietnam. Viettel is taking its early steps to accumulate the advantages that 5G will bring into the country. “The official broadcast of 5G in Ho Chi Minh City is an important milestone in Viettel’s strategy to make Vietnam one of the first countries in the world to commercialize 5G services,” Viettel deputy director Tao Duc Thang said in a statement.

 

The 10 stations will be used by Viettel, the country's largest telecom firm, to comprehensively check and assess its 5G service before launching it commercially next year. Military-run Viettel installed the first 5G station in Hanoi early this year and made the first 5G phone call in May. It was the first firm in the country to receive permit to trial 5G services in January, followed by MobiFone.

 

Last November, Information and Communication Minister Nguyen Manh Hung said at a conference that Vietnam should test 5G in 2019 and ensure nationwide coverage by 2020. “Vietnam should be one of the first countries to launch the network, at least in Hanoi and HCMC,” he had said. The country had been one of the last in Southeast Asia to roll out 4G services.

 

5G is said to give speeds 100 times faster than 4G, mainly used for smartphones and other similar devices. 5G is also expected to support new applications like remote medical procedures and autonomous driving.

 

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IQE, which makes semiconductor wafers for chips used in Apple Inc products, also manufactures for Asian customers in Taiwan and Singapore. It has banked on the region for big new orders amid the tariff dispute between the United States and China.

 

The partnership, CSDC Private Ltd, was formed in 2015 by its Singaporean unit MBE Technology with WIN Semiconductors and Nanyang Technological University to develop and sell compound semiconductor technologies.

 

Shares of IQE were up 5.5 per cent at 62.85 pence as of 0715 GMT.

 

US restrictions on China's Huawei had damaged the semiconductor industry's supply chain and IQE said it may possibly attempt a turn-around for CSDC as it takes full control, with benefits seen from being closer to Asian chip customers and original equipment manufacturers.

 

''In the current geopolitical context, Singapore represents a strategically significant site for IQE,'' chief executive officer Drew Nelson said. The three way partnership, which recorded deficits of S$8.9 million in 2018, will be purchased for a nominal fee of S$1 from WIN and S$1 from other stakeholders, the company said.

 

IQE said it plans its 2019 adjusted core profit and operating profit to take a £500,000 (S$843,000) hit post the acquisition. It documented a pretax loss of £3.7 mllion for the six months concluded June 30.

 

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South Korea does have some 1,500 energy storage system (ESS) facilities across the country and 23 have been damaged by fire and left inoperable. Based on Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO), 30,232 megawatt-hours of electricity worth 6.5 billion won ( xxx) was lost. Samsung SDI said on Monday that the company has developed a special fire extinguishing system that would fundamentally stop fire from spreading even if there is a case of battery cell combustion inside an ESS.

 

New ESS facilities will be equipped with the new system. The company planned to pay for safety upgrades for some 1,000 existing ESS facilities. The upgrade will cost up to 200 billion won.

 

The new fire prevention system consists of high-tech chemicals applied with Samsung SDI's core technologies and materials that block heat from spreading. ''When an ESS' interior catches fire and its temperature reaches a certain degree, special chemicals are automatically sprayed to extinguish the initial flame,'' Samsung SDI's senior managing director Heo Eun-ki was quoted as saying.

 

Heo said that the new system would also restrict nearby cells from overheating. Other undamaged cells would cool off over a long period, keeping up its normal state. South Korean tech companies such as LG Chem has jumped into the speedily increasing ESS market. While LG Chem focuses on establishing a network of ESS grids using lithium-ion batteries, the Hyundai auto group joined with a state nuclear power company in September to use recycled electric car batteries in ESS facilities.

 

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Aaeon is the first company to publicize it is applying the KL520, while Kneron has already revealed customer wins for its facial recognition model, like systems integrator TIIS, which has built it into a security system for the public banks of Taiwan. Company sources said that Kneron made around $5 million in revenue in 2019, a stark difference to various edge AI chip companies who are not yet market-ready.

 

“Aaeon has used our chip and put it into a form factor that’s easy to insert into a pre-exisiting design,” said Kneron chief commercial officer Adrian Ong.

 

“We have other customers in the commercialisation phase,” he added.

 

The company has a good focus on AI at the edge and is directed at inference in computer vision applications that require low latency and low power, such as smart door locks. The flagship chip KL520, unveiled in May 2019, is optimized for image processing models based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs), including but not limited to Kneron’s own models for facial recognition. The KL520 runs 0.3 TOPS at 0.5 W (equivalent to 0.6 TOPS/W).

 

Kneron also has its very own neural processing unit (NPU) IP, neural network models for image processing, and a corresponding toolchain. “We started out developing models for face recognition, face detection and object detection,” Ong said. “But because [a lot of us] had a silicon background, we decided to develop our own IP and our own chips as well.”

 

Kneron’s is using a reconfigurable chip architecture to customize its silicon to specific models, assisted by a compiler which allocates resources successfully so the hardware can be best utilised to run the models. The compiler also uses compression techniques which Ong claimed can tremendously reduce the size of the models to allow them to run in resource-constrained environments to save power and cost.

 

Kneron’s facial recognition model was earlier recognized by NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) as the best performing model under 100MB. “In fact, the model is 57 MB,” Ong said. “It even outperformed competitors’ models that were bigger than 1 GB. For embedded applications, it can be compressed even further, down to 32 or even 16 MB.”

 

Kneron was established in 2015, with its 110 employees based at headquarters in San Diego, a development office in Taiwan and a sales office in Shenzhen. It is backed by Horizons Ventures, Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, Qualcomm and Sequoia Capital, amongst others. “The strength of the company is image processing, but we recognise that over time people are going to want to add audio capability as well, so we are developing IP for that,” Ong said.

 

Kneron’s second generation chip will be able to accelerate both CNNs and RNNs (recurrent neural networks), for vision and audio applications. Samples of the second generation chip are due in Q1-2020.

 

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Make Full Backups of Essential Business Data

 

Facilitate a full, encrypted backup of your data on each computer and mobile device a minimum of once a month, shortly after a complete malware scan. Store these backups at a safeguarded, off-site location. Save your encryption password or key in a secure location separate from where your backups are stored. Multiple software applications will allow you to encrypt your backups.

 

With your backups in place, if a computer breaks, an employee makes an error, or a malicious program infects your system, you will be able to restore your data. Without backups, you will have to manually recreate your business information from paper records and employee memory.

 

It is mandatory to back up data such as:

- Word processing documents and electronic spreadsheets

- Databases, especially customer relationship management (CRM), financial, human resource (HR), and accounts receivable (AR)/payable (AP) files

- Product design and manufacturing data associated with or related to CAD/CAE/CAM, process plans, tooling and other inventory information, production scheduling, inspection, maintenance, bid data, work orders, scheduling

- Other operational technology (OT) data such as machine and process condition monitoring and analysis

- System logs and other information technology (IT) information

 

Don’t be afraid about the software applications; simply focus on the data. Store your backups on an external USB hard drive, other removable media, or a separate server. Use caution when picking a partner if you decide to store your data online and encrypt all data ahead of storing it in the cloud. Hard-drive backups should be large enough to hold all your monthly backups for one year. Create split folders for each computer so you can copy your data into the appropriate folder on the external drive. After your backups are complete, test them instantly to assure your efforts were successful.

 

Make Incremental Backups of Important Business Information

 

Plan automatic incremental or differential backups a minimum of once a week. Because they will only record information since your last backup, you may need to schedule them daily or once an hour, depending on the needs of your business. Think about how much information was changed or generated between each backup and the impact to your company if that information was lost. So many security software suites offer automated backup functions that will do this on a regular schedule for you.

 

Check always your storage capacity. You should be able to hold data for 52 weekly backups, so the capacity should be about 52 times the amount of data you want to store. Take caution to back up the data for every computer and mobile device.

 

For extra redundancy, store your backups in multiple locations, such as one in the office, one in a safety deposit box across town, and one in the cloud. Remember that incremental testing is just as important as incremental backups to make sure you can read your data and use that information in the event of a security breach.

 

Consider Cyber Insurance for Increased Recovery Capability

 

Like flood or fire insurance, you can obtain cyber insurance for your facility. These services can help you recover from an information security incident more promptly and effectively and may cover the cost of: 

- Cybersecurity expertise to assist in identifying the extent of damage caused

- Consultation to help investigate the incident and report it to the appropriate authorities

- Loss of revenue due to downtime

- Legal fees, fines, and penalties incurred

 

In regards to any partner, select a cyber insurance provider with care. Do your due diligence by researching the company, the services they provide, the type of events they cover, and their reputation for meeting their contractual agreements.

 

Assess & Improve Your Procedures & Technologies

 

Take an honest look at your processes, procedures, and technology solutions and assess what improvements you need to make to lessen your risks. Try conducting training or tabletop exercises. These scenario exercises can simulate a major event, which will allow you to identify potential weaknesses and readiness. Then you can make corrections as recommended.

 

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The Galaxy S10’s Intelligent Wi-Fi uses machine learning to make sure that users’ Wi-Fi connections are both smart and safe. The innovation allows the device to recognize when a user has entered a space where Wi-Fi connections are usually to be unstable, and quickly switch to LTE connectivity to avoid network interruption. What’s more, Intelligent Wi-Fi allows the device to more promptly identify weaker Wi-Fi signals in locations which include elevators, allowing it to transition from Wi-Fi to LTE connectivity much more quickly. After connecting to a new network, the function even allows the device to examine traffic patterns and notify users if the network is suspicious, thus protecting them from dangers such as phishing and malware attacks.

 

The Galaxy S10’s Wi-Fi 6 capability produces smartphone support for next generation technology, boosting download and upload speeds by up to 20 percent in comparison with previous generations of Wi-Fi. When users are in crowded areas where Wi-Fi signals would usually be slow and unstable, Wi-Fi 6 enables for network connections that are about four times faster than those experienced by users of older Wi-Fi generations connecting in the same location. And shockingly, this added speed and reliability actually uses less battery power, not more, allowing users to conserve power for when they need it.

 

The WBA Industry Awards have been honoring great developments in Wi-Fi ecosystems globally for the past seven years. The awards acknowledge exceptional innovations in wireless networks, smart cities and remote wireless deployments in the interests of recognizing and encouraging excellence and promoting successful practices. Each shortlisted nomination is featured in a WBA Case Study so that the innovation may be shared with the wider industry.

 

The ‘Best Wi-Fi Innovations’ category acknowledges network operators and technology companies whose solutions are post-deployment, and “recognizes and celebrates innovations and deployments with Wi-Fi, which enable seamless and secure support, greater interoperability and/or transformational benefits to customers.”

 

Talking about the latest awards win, Jong-Mu Choi, Head of Convergence R&D Group at Samsung Electronics said, “Samsung is proud that its Wi-Fi innovations have been recognized in such a way. The company will keep working to enable its devices to make use of these new Wi-Fi capabilities, so that the improved usability therein reaches consumers as quickly as possible.  One example of this is the Galaxy Note10’s recent accreditation as Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6™, which saw it join the Galaxy S10 as one of Samsung’s certified Wi-Fi 6-capable devices. Going forward, Samsung looks forward to utilizing faster, smarter Wi-Fi connections as the foundation that will allow it to continue bringing added convenience to users.”

 

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The Clock Is Ticking When a Threat Is Detected

 

Don’t wait for a hacker to hit before developing your incident response plan. For smaller manufacturers, even a small security breach can have a significant impact on their operations. Acting upon instantly will empower you to better contain or lower the impact of a cyber attack.

 

Develop a Plan for Information Security Incidents

 

When developing your response strategy, look at the immediate actions you and your employees will need to take in case there is an incident. Your response plan should include:

 

Roles and Responsibilities

 

- Who: Make a list of who to call in the instance of an incident. It’s crucial you know who will make the decision to initiate recovery procedures and who will be the primary contact with appropriate law enforcement personnel.

- What: Be sure you have a plan for what to do with your data in the case of an incident. This may include shutting down or locking your computer systems, moving your information to a backup site, and/or physically getting rid of important documents and sensitive materials.

- When: Determine when to alert senior management, emergency personnel, cybersecurity professionals, legal council, service providers, or insurance providers. Be sure to include all relevant contact information.

- Type: Your response plan should describe the sorts of activities that constitute an information security incident. Include incidents such as your website being down for more than a specified length of time or evidence of information theft.

 

Know Your Notification Obligations

 

Be aware that many states and countries have notification laws that require businesses to alert customers if there is a chance their information was stolen, disclosed, or otherwise lost. Familiarise yourself with international, state, and local laws regarding notification obligations and include that information in your response plan.

 

Likewise include suggestions on when to notify appropriate authorities. You should contact your local police to file a report when there's a possibility that any personal information, intellectual property, or other sensitive information was forged. Most importantly, you and your employees should understand your role in your cybersecurity response plan. Develop procedures for each job role that describe exactly what the employee is required to do if there is a cybersecurity incident. When everyone understands their role in your response plan, you can act fast and mitigate the potential damage.

 

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Richard Yu Chengdong, chief executive of Huawei's mobile business, told CNBC that the Shenzhen-based company has indefinitely put aside for now the launch of a new product in its Matebook series. The US blacklist, which prohibits American companies from selling products and services to Huawei, was behind the cancellation, as reported by Yu. The company did not immediately confirm the remarks by Yu.

 

The Post reported last month that Microsoft had stopped acknowledging new orders from Huawei after the Chinese telecoms gear and smartphone maker was added to the US Entity List. The two major areas of business between Huawei and Microsoft - Windows operating systems for laptops and other content-related services - have both been dangling by the US company as it drives to stick to US government restrictions, according to the Post report, which referred people familiar with the matter.

 

Huawei, the largest smartphone vendor in China and the second largest all over the world, has been pushing its laptop business not long ago, launching a series of personal computers that cover the mid- and high-end markets.

 

Huawei also confronts the prospect of not being able to use the Android operating system (OS) on its smartphones and Windows OS on its PC products. The company set out work on an alternative OS seven years earlier and yet isn't fully prepared to launch it yet as the US ban came on suddenly, sources told the Post in a separate report.

 

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Amazon said its ''Climate Pledge'' initiative and said it would be its first signatory, as part of an attempt to cut down on emissions according to a 2050 goal for carbon neutrality set by the Paris agreement.

 

''We're done being in the middle of the herd on this issue,'' Mr Bezos said. ''If a company with as much physical infrastructure as Amazon - which delivers more than 10 billion items a year - can meet the Paris agreement 10 years early, then any company can.'' Mr Bezos remarked he had spoken with other CEOs of global companies, and noted ''I'm finding a lot of interest in joining the pledge.''

 

Together with the ramped-up effort, Mr Bezos said Amazon had agreed to get 100,000 electric delivery vans from vehicle startup Rivian, to help cut its carbon footprint. Amazon already revealed a US$440 million (S$605.7 million) investment in Rivian. The first vans will hit the road in 2021, with the fleet to be perfectly operating in 2030. Amazon also pledged to invest US$100 million on reforestation efforts in co-operation with the Nature Conservancy.

 

Amazon said its new ''sustainability'' initiative will deal with all of its business operations, with reduced carbon in packaging, delivery and its own energy use. Mr Bezos's announcement came the day before a global day of demonstrations to demand action on climate change, previous to a UN summit on zero-emissions on September 23. Amazon confronts mounting pressure to address its environmental impact, with more than 1,000 of its workers preparing to walk off the job Friday as part of the Global Climate Strike.

 

Asked about the Amazon employees set to take part in the strike, Mr Bezos called it ''totally understandable.'' ''People are passionate about this issue,'' he said. ''Everybody in this room should be passionate about this issue.''

 

Amazon staff welcomed the declaration but said they would maintain their protest. ''Climate Pledge is a huge win.. & we're thrilled at what workers have achieved in under a year. But we know it's not enough,'' said a Twitter message from Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.

 

The Paris Agreement, alone, will not get us to a livable world. Today, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we're going to be in the streets. Greenpeace USA senior campaigner Gary Cook said the Amazon news was optimistic but lacked details on exactly how it would be implemented.

 

''Amazon is known for speed, but if Jeff Bezos wants Amazon to be a leader on climate, he needs to spell out exactly how it is going to rapidly move the company off of fossil fuels to keep our planet within the 1.5 degrees temperature threshold in the Paris Agreement that Amazon has now committed to,'' Mr Cook said.

 

Seeking 'many more' companies 

 

Mr Bezos was accompanied by Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate chief and founder of the climate activist group Global Optimism, who expressed hope the pledge would stimulate more action by companies. ''If Amazon can set ambitious goals like this and make significant changes at their scale, we think many more companies should be able to do the same and will accept the challenge,'' she said.

 

Mr Bezos stated he hopes Amazon to reach 80 per cent renewable energy use by 2024, up from around 40 per cent today, and 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030 on a path to net-zero carbon by 2040. This will involve investments in wind and solar energy projects and initiatives to control carbon emissions at its facilities including the second headquarters, HQ2, just outside the US capital. Mr Bezos said that Amazon's step to speedier shipping, including one-day delivery on many items, would be a net positive in environmental terms even though it was ''counterintuitive.''

 

''The reason is, that once you get to one day and the same day, you can't really do it by air transportation anymore,'' he said. This means keeping warehouses and products closer to the consumer and as a result ''you're actually transporting the products in a very efficient way,'' he said.

 

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A good autonomous checkout should enable the shopper to walk in, grab stuff, and leave. That is all you have to do to buy in an autonomous checkout store. Companies getting into this space have been trying to fix this problem using various kinds of approaches. It is astonishing how few of these companies have addressed the 5 hurdles of autonomous checkout necessary to make any idea a viable market solution: privacy, scalability, experience, flexibility, and insights (or “PSEFI” for short).

 

Privacy

 

Leave out regulations for a while. It is a company’s job to do everything it can to shield their customers’ privacy. As technology advances, it is the responsibility of those who bring the advancements, not the regulators, to guard the people they serve. That said, guidelines can be a practical guide and should be seen as the very least set of requirements a solution must satisfy. Take the example of the class action lawsuit against Walmart filed in April of this year.  It involves eradicating the use of facial recognition for checkout.  However this case goes, we believe biometric information, mostly facial recognition, is unnecessary for autonomous checkout. Shoppers deserve a solution that serve their needs without compromising their privacy.

 

Scalability

 

Autonomous checkout can not include closing a shop to deploy technology. Using in-shelf sensors and in-shelf cameras is not realistic for chain-wide deployment. A retailer would have to either take all the product off the shelves, change all the shelves, and restock the new shelves, OR they would have to retrofit all the current shelving with sensors on premise. None of these options are practical for retailers as they would require stores to close entirely for at least multiple weeks. Not only will a retail chain not accept that as a market solution, but it would mean a chain-wide rollout that could take years to complete.

 

The appropriate solution is a lightweight overhead camera installation that can be done as quickly as a few hours.  These installs can be done in a single day without disrupting customers or operations. Lower installation requirements indicate less labor and faster deployment. Less hardware and less labor translate to lower costs and fewer lost sales. Additionally, just overhead cameras leads to reduced maintenance calls and operational complexity.

 

Experience

 

After having spoken with 200+ retail chains in many countries, one thing is clear: The retail experience is changing, fast! The advent of ecommerce has forced retailers to rethink the in-store experience to bring back online shoppers.  Pressure from ecommerce isn't going to kill retail, shopping is too fun! It is, however, forcing retailers to compete by reimagining what shopping means. Two of the biggest complaints most US retailers receive from customers are (1) long wait times in line and (2) poor customer service. Bypassing the need for waiting in line allows retailers to put more resources toward enhancing the in-store customer experience.

 

Autonomous checkout is the first big modify to retail since barcode scanners and it’s only going to get better.  Soon, shoppers will be able to walk in, without having to take their phones out, shop and leave.  A number of the retailers I have spoken with already have specific experiences in mind for what they will do with their stores once they have autonomous checkout. In other words, autonomous checkout helps retailers a chance to better serve their customers and the flexibility to reimagine the original checkout space to delight their shoppers.

 

Flexibility

 

Retail environments are intricate and continually updating. Sales happen on the fly, items get moved around the store by shoppers, the Internet goes down, inventory and compliance issues are dynamic, and displays and presentation must be consistent with the retailer’s brand. Autonomous checkout should provide retailers the ability to amplify their brand with their customers. The fewer hardware types used in autonomous checkout, the more flexibility a store can be with its merchandising and its brand experience.

 

Flash sales are one example of this flexibility. Imagine baked goods that are about to expire within the day. ‘Let’s put them on a table over there and slap a 50% off sticker on them. Go!’

 

If a store uses shelf sensors, all of its products need to stay on that unique shelf, making this scenario extremely hard. There are so many examples when a store manager needs to make changes to adapt and meet customer needs on the fly. Payment flexibility is also important. A viable solution must accept cash, credit, and other popular payment methods.

 

Insights

 

Retail analytics are invaluable, but they must be seen through the lens of privacy. A lot of information can be gathered by retailers and brands, but they should have no connection to any particular individual. Nevertheless, data helps retailers and brands clarify their messaging to customers and create products that customers want. What products do people pick up, but not buy? How are shoppers reacting to brand campaigns and advertisements? What is the storefront inventory at any given moment? These questions  are currently only answered via ecommerce, but AI-based computer vision can level the playing for brick & mortar retailers.

 

Autonomous checkout will push numerous new experiences imagined by the world’s best retailers. The only way for the technology company to bring them to market, however, is to clear these 5 Hurdles.

 

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