EncryptoTel weekly digest(09.12.18)
Huawei hemmed in, Korean companies overtake Apple and investors put millions into AI-startup
CFO of Huawei was arrested in Canada
The daughter of the founder of telecommunications giant Huawei and chief financial officer of the company, Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver on December 1st.
Details of the arrest remain unknown, but USA keeps investigating possible violation of Iran sanctions by the corporation. Meng Wanzhou faces extradition to the US.
Arrest coincided with the international spy scandal around Huawei equipment and attempts to limit the use of the company`s production in western countries. USA, Australia and New Zealand agreed not to use products of this company in the infrastructure necessary for switching to faster mobile networks 5G “for security reasons”. The company rejects the threat accusations and expresses willingness to cooperate.
Chinese embassy in Canada expressed their protest against arrest and demanded to release Meng Wanzhou from detention.
Huawei is ready to spend up to $2 billion for maintaining the UK market
Chinese manufacturer of telecommunications equipment held a meeting with the representatives of the National Cybersecurity Center of Great Britain to agree on fulfillment of a number of conditions necessary to continue work with british companies. To implement the terms of agreement Huawei planned to contribute $2 billion, as Financial Times and Reuters found out.
UK and Canada are two countries of the “5-Eyes” alliance (security services of english-speaking western countries), that did not impose a ban for Huawei equipment use in creation of telecommunications infrastructure. The other three countries- USA, New Zealand and Australia- already established such bans.
But the clouds are gathering over Huawei in the UK already as well. Recently the British Government sent a letter to telecommunications companies, that encouraged serious consideration of security issues in selecting the supplier, hinting at possible risks from chinese manufacturer. Later, the british mobile networks operator BT decided to remove Huawei`s equipment from their 4G network and not allow the chinese company to receive tenders for the 5G supply.
Japan is following USA and ready to partly ban Huawei equipment
Japan is planning to forbid procurement of chinese manufacturers Huawei and ZTE equipment within the government contracts, Yomiuri newspaper reports referring to a source in Japanese government.
It is expected that officially this decision will be announced next week on monday. Reason remains the same- concerns of the Japanese authorities about possible spy microchips implanted in telecommunications equipment and their use for cyber attacks of future infrastructure.
American intelligence services allege that Huawei cooperates with Chinese government and the equipment may contain “bookmarks” for spy invasion, though no proof was published and Huawei itself refuted these accusations.
USA will have a smartphone for 5G in 2019
American mobile networks operator Verizon Communications and Samsung Electronics announced their plans on launch of a smartphone created for the new generation of 5G mobile networks in the first half of 2019.
Prototype of this smartphone will be presented at the annual Hawaii conference that will be held this week. As is already known, the smartphone will be provided with Qualcomm chips.
Verizon is the leader at 5G networks deployment in the USA. Next year the company promises to cover several american cities with new generation networks, and the first projects of 5G networks deployment were launched in Houston, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Indianapolis in October.
Together with Samsung the company is hoping to outrun Apple, that, because of the conflict, was obliged to switch from Qualcomm chips to Intel, that will start delivery only in the second half of 2019. So the first iPhone for 5G networks will not appear until 2020.
During the first half of 2019 american market is waiting for the appearance of another 5G networks smartphone- a joint product of LG Electronics and Sprint.
AI application for combating phreakers attracted $90 mln of investments from the largest banks
Pindrop startup, that develops an AI-based solutions for combating phreakers attracted $90 mln of investments. Among the startup`s investors are Goldman Sachs Bank, a Singapore investment company EDBI and european Vitruvian, as well as Alphabet that owns Google, bank group Citigroup and venture capital funds Andreessen Horowitz from the Silicon Valley.
Pindrop was founded in Atlanta 7 years ago. Pindrop`s solution is using machine learning and artificial intelligence to determine phreakers automatically. Thus, Pindrop is able to identify up to 1380 voice characteristics by phone. Accuracy of identifying phreakers reaches 99%. According to the words of Pindrop`s co-founder Vijay Balasubramaniyan, in 2018 Pindrop helped to identify fraudulent actions on phone and prevented $350 mln crimes.
Pindrop will assign received investments to international market expansion, Europe first of all.
Bitcoin collapsed to a new annual minimum
Cryptocurrency market is still reeling. Amidst the absence of optimistic news, especially rather harsh signals from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about ETF Bitcoin launch in America, Bitcoin collapsed on 10% and increased to $3250, but still it is the lowest price since September 2017.
Other cryptocurrencies such as Ripple, Litecoin and Ethereum collapsed even more. ETH fell down to $90, and Litecoin — to $25.
Total capitalization aims to $100 bln, for the last time this situation was observed in August of 2017.
EncryptoTel is in the ongoing process of testing services
At this stage of our product`s development, specialists are testing all developed modules and identifying any possible errors and shortcomings. Inner services are being tested along with front-end module. Our goal is to identify and rectify weaknesses in order to make EncryptoTel telecommunications platform the most secure and stable on the market.
EncryptoTel`s team is also finalizing iOS application available in TestFlight mode on AppStore, testing the work of application during calls.
Soon after finishing the with inner VoIP architecture, we are getting prepared for the full deployment of our platform on production servers.
