The World According to Fletch™

DID YOU KNOW - Americans lost $29.8 billion in phone fraud over the past year? Over 59 million Americans said they lost money as a result of phone scams in the past 12 months. AI fraud detection CAN change this, but it requires a bit more. Find out what in today's TeleCom NewsByte.

The FCC has officially designated Huawei and ZTE as national security threats, and not allowing any Universal Service Fund monies to be spent on any equipment or services from these Chinese firms. Huawei revenues are off by 30% and the company has gone into 'survival mode' according to the new Rotating Chair Eric Xu.

Canadian PSTN operator Telus has moved one step closer to a full-fiber future when it announced that only a mere 12% of it’s customers residing inside its footprint are still served by copper. Telus expects all existing copper lines to be retired by late 2022 or early 2023, which require 35% fewer repairs in the legacy infrastructure.

Another player enters the space satellite race. Boeing gets approval to launch a series of low-level Earth Orbit Satellites targeted at delivering Internet services to remote areas. With this latest addition, the skies around the planet are destined to become a bit of a parking lot for space junk.

RingCentral is again shaking up the UCaaS competitive landscape, this time with Mitel. A new strategic partnership will provide Mitel’s global customer base with a migration path to RingCentral’s Message Video Phone (MVP). That’s RingCentral’s cloud phone system.

A new machine-learning system from MIT is able to assist robots to understand and performing certain social interactions. Researchers have developed a control framework that enables robots to understand what it means to help or hinder one another and incorporate social reasoning into the tasks they are accomplishing.

Fierce Telecoms Diana Gooveret reports that Lumen Technologies has finally unveiled their plan to expand its residential Quantum Fiber service, to 12 million locations over the coming years.  CEO Jeff Storey said the company already passes 2.5 million locations with fiber and the company plans to ramp the pace of new builds going forward to reach 1 million additional passings in 2021 and a range of 1.5 million to 2 million each year after that.

The next phase in MLTS 911 Federal legislation goes into effect in less than 60 days as Phase II of the RAY BAUM'S Act §506 will require additional action by MLTS Operators on January 6, 2022. Currently, those requirements apply to WIRED devices that are analog, digital, or IP telephony-based, and located within the business premises. In less than 60 days, those requirements will be extended to cover wireless devices within the premise, as well as provide a dispatchable location for remote users, such as work at home deployments of telephony on laptops, or IP telephones. Guidance on remediation can be downloaded from the 911.gov website, and current information on new Next Generation 911 Technology and solutions that lower OPEX, as well as CAPEX, compared to legacy E911 systems is available from http://911inform.com.

With all of the technology coming out every day, it's difficult to decipher which particular trends and topics are important, and why. Here's our list of top 10 trending technologies, as well as their impact on innovation. While some are obvious, others are more obscure but certainly relevant as the modern ecosystem evolves itself.

Huawei's quarterly revenue shrank for the first time on record, reflecting the devastating impact of U.S. sanctions that forced China’s largest technology company out of smartphones and into other technology arenas. The disappointing results underscore the depth of the damage Washington has wrought on a company that once vied with Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. to lead the global smartphone market. It reported revenue fell 11% to 220.1 billion yuan ($33.5 billion) in 2020’s final quarter. That’s down from 3.7% growth in the September quarter and 23% in the second quarter, according to Bloomberg calculations based off previously reported figures.