Even though eminent experts in the field believe there is a gold rush going on in space, with the leading actors in communications satellite rushing to deploy commercial crafts, the controversial OneWeb project, which aims to take advantage of such opportunities, still does not meet the recognised requirements of value for public money, a UK parliamentary committee has been told.

Formed in 2012, OneWeb develops what the UK government claims is “cutting-edge” satellite technology from its bases in the UK and the US. Emulating Elon Musk’s Starlink project, it aims to implement a constellation of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites with a network of global gateway stations and a range of user terminals to provide an affordable, fast, high-bandwidth and a low-latency communications service, connected to internet of things (IoT) devices, and a pathway for mass adoption of 5G services.

OneWeb is also the developer of a positioning

In a major enhancement of its 5G assets and general offer, Nokia has announced new added-value features and digital automation enablers for its Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) private wireless networking platform and has digitised all its 5G network deployments around the world.

With a combination of wireless networking, cloud and edge computing, the company sees Nokia DAC as ideal for organisations eyeing use cases such as internet of things (IoT), analytics, automation and remote operations.

With the new functionality and added-value features, Nokia says it is further easing and accelerating customers’ transformation path towards Industry 4.0. Nokia DAC team comms and DAC VoIP offer customers voice and video for secure one-to-one and one-to-many campus-wide communication, it says.

Delivered over the platform’s scalable edge cloud, the on-premise applications are seen as ideal for asset-intensive locations of all sizes, such as ports, mines and factories.

Enabled by a cloud-native framework, the Nokia

While other countries, most notably the UK, struggle to launch contact-tracing apps to help prevent the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus, nations in the European Union (EU) have moved up a gear as they begin initial testing of the previously announced interoperability gateway service linking national apps across the EU.

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, member states, backed by the European Commission (EC), have been assessing the effectiveness, security, privacy and data protection aspects of digital solutions to address the crisis.

In April, and as part of a common coordinated approach to support the gradual lifting of confinement measures that had been implemented across the EU, member states, supported by the EC, announced the development of a toolbox for the use of mobile applications for contact tracing and warning in response to the coronavirus pandemic. It stated that contact-tracing apps, if well-coordinated and fully compliant with EU rules,

The proposed partnership between TikTok and Oracle will – if approved by the US authorities – see the creation in the US of a brand new company and 20,000 jobs, it has emerged.

The joint proposal from TikTok’s China-based parent ByteDance and Oracle was made to the US government over the weekend and is designed to appease national security concerns around the data TikTok holds on millions of US citizens and devices.

Under executive orders signed in August by president Trump, the TikTok service, which rocketed to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic, faces an imminent ban.

On Monday, US treasury secretary Stephen Mnuchin confirmed in an appearance on the CNBC network that the US government will conduct discussions with ByteDance and Oracle in the next few days about the proposals.

“We did get a proposal over the weekend that includes Oracle as the trusted technology partner, with Oracle making

Research from Internet of Things World in partnership with Omdia, covering both providers and enterprise users, has found that despite benefits from internet of things (IoT) technology, an overwhelming majority of businesses harbour fears of IoT-related breaches to their infrastructures.

As many as 85% of the survey of 170 IoT industry leaders believe that security concerns remain a major barrier to IoT adoption. Almost two-thirds (64%) of respondents stated that end-to-end IoT security is their top short-term priority, surpassing edge compute (55%), artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (50%) and 5G deployments (28%).

Underlining the complexity they face in protecting their IoT deployments and data, as well as their existing communications networks, end users reported using three to four different IoT security methods on average.

The three most common methods offered by providers and employed by enterprises to ensure security included end-to-end data encryption (60%), regular firmware and software update policies

Days after first revealing that the country was about to join the likes of Germany, Korea, the Republic of Ireland and other countries in having such capability, the Scottish government has made the official launch of Protect Scotland, the country’s Covid-19 coronavirus contact-tracing app.

Supported by a dedicated Protect Scotland website, the app is an extra tool complementing existing person-to-person contact tracing, which remains the main component of NHS Scotland’s Test and Protect system. 

The Scottish contact-tracing technology was first announced in May 2020, just as the UK-wide NHS began the first trials of its much-delayed and yet-to-be-launched app on the Isle of Wight. Accessible on smartphones or computers, the web-based tool for the NHS in Scotland was designed to allow citizens to input details of people they have been in close contact with, and for these to be sent directly and securely to contact-tracing teams.

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