O2, the phone network, has broken across the UK. The carrier has been hit by a major outage, according to the monitoring site Down Detector. It is also affecting other companies that uses O2's network, such as Giffgaff. Problems include failure to access data, make or receive calls or send text messages, according to users on Twitter. But it does not appear to be affecting all O2 users, and it is not clear how some people are still able to use their phones.

Toyota and Softbank have established a joint venture that could offer various autonomous vehicle services in the future. Softbank already has several self-driving partnerships with other companies. But this one called MONET (a portmanteau for "mobility network") will combine the powers of Toyota's Mobility Services Platform, which serves as its information infrastructure for connected vehicles, and of SoftBank's Internet of Things platform. Well, for the first phase of the partnership, they're planning to roll out a "just-in-time" vehicle dispatch service for companies and public agencies in Japan. However, MONET's ultimate goal is to roll out Autono-MaaS (autonomous mobility as a service) businesses using Toyota's e-Palette electric vehicle, which is still just a concept.

Titled "New Digital Horizons: Connect, Create, Innovate", the second edition of the event is being jointly organised by Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and other government departments. The aim behind IMC2018 is building ideas, sharing knowledge and best practices, forming lasting industry relationships, fostering commercial opportunities, showcasing game changing mobile technology and product trends, providing sectoral insights, industrial solutions, case studies and workshops. The biggest ICTevent in South Asia, comprising of conclave and exhibition will include ministerial and partner programs in Digital India, Smart City, emerging technologies, Make in India projects, skill harmonisation, business innovation and knowledge sharing etc. There will be a technology showcase offering a glimpse into virtual reality, connected cars, m-health, smart wearables, smart home, artificial intelligence, drones, robotics, smart energy, internet of things, block chain, bitcoin, Machine Vision, Cloud Computing Holography, among others. The three day event will cover a wide array of topics, including but not confined to emerging technologies to new digital ecosystems, m-education, digital marketing to e-health, 5G and retail.

Over the last years, the computational power of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets has grown dramatically, reaching the level of desktop computers available not long ago. While standard smartphone apps are no longer a problem for them, there is still a group of tasks that can easily challenge even high-end devices, namely running artificial intelligence algorithms. In this paper, we present a study of the current state of deep learning in the Android ecosystem and describe available frameworks, programming models and the limitations of running AI on smartphones. We give an overview of the hardware acceleration resources available on four main mobile chipset platforms: Qualcomm, HiSilicon, MediaTek and Samsung. Additionally, we present the real-world performance results of different mobile SoCs collected with AI Benchmark that are covering all main existing hardware configurations.

The challenges that operators face when trying to densify their outdoor networks are well documented. It is tough to gain access to the right sites without a time-consuming process of individually negotiating for each one, but even the best efforts to achieve a standardized template – let alone a common scale of pricing – have run into many problems (see separate item). The latest opposition from US cities to proposals by the FCC shows the significance of the problem – and the USA has progressed a lot further than most countries in seeking to address the issue, as its operators gear up for major densification programs, which will only intensify with 5G.

Future cellular Internet of Things (IoT) networks are going to be expected to deliver much lower latency and significantly higher reliability. Getting to that point, however, must be a step-by-step approach, said a telco equipment executive at Mobile World Congress Americas earlier this month. "Doing one at a time is not so difficult, but doing both at the same time is a challenge," said Jawad Manssour, head of Networks Portfolio Management at Product Area Networks with equipment maker Ericsson, during a presentation at the conference. Ericsson is one of the world's big three principal base station and cellular equipment vendors, along with Huawei and Nokia. Mobile network provider Sprint and Ericsson recently announced that they are building a distributed virtualized core IoT network and an IoT operating system. Manssour said one needs to look at IoT evolution in four distinct genres -- Massive IoT, High-Performance IoT, Critical IoT, and Industrial IoT -- to fully appreciate the challenges of IoT overall as use ramps up.

Software defined networking (SDN) represents a promising networking architecture that combines central management and network programmability. SDN separates the control plane from the data plane and moves the network management to a central point, called the controller, that can be programmed and used as the brain of the network. Recently, the research community has showed an increased tendency to benefit from the recent advancements in the artificial intelligence (AI) field to provide learning abilities and better decision making in SDN. In this study, we provide a detailed overview of the recent efforts to include AI in SDN. Our study showed that the research efforts focused on three main sub-fields of AI namely: machine learning, meta-heuristics and fuzzy inference systems. Accordingly, in this work we investigate their different application areas and potential use, as well as the improvements achieved by including AI-based techniques in the SDN paradigm.

Netradyne, an artificial intelligence startup founded by two former Qualcomm executives, has raised $21 million in new funding Thursday to push forward the company's technology for commercial fleets. The new round of cash was led by Microsoft's corporate venture arm, M12, along with Reliance Industries, and Point72 Ventures. Reliance, based in India, previously invested $16 million in Netradyne's Series A. The San Diego company, founded in 2015, makes a sophisticated monitoring technology that can keep an eye on commercial vehicle fleets while on the road. The startup's small device mounts behind a rear-view mirror and acts as a computerized command center to capture 360-degree video of a vehicle's surroundings. The tool uses Netradyne's AI software to figure out if drivers are operating safely or not, picking up things like tailgating, speeding and getting in accidents.

As soon as we hear the term Artificial Intelligence most of us think of Skynet, Jarvis or Terminator. While the researchers have spent decades in improving Artificial Intelligence, it wasn't until recently that they were finally able to create smart systems that can mirror the AI capabilities of us humans. Advancement in Big Data was one of the big reasons for development in this technology. Recent developments in Big Data have allowed us the capability to organize a very large amount of information into structured components that can be very quickly processed by computers. Blockchain is another technology that has the potential for rapidly advancing and transforming Artificial Intelligence.

The Wear OS update that Google announced at IFA has arrived. With new navigational shortcuts, tighter Google Assistant integration, and a smartphone-style notification "stream," your old Android Wear smartwatch will certainly feel different once it's installed. While older watches will enjoy some interface improvements, Google's update isn't about fixing your current device. Android Wear and Wear OS smartwatches won't see much of a speed or battery life boost with the update, for instance. But next year's models, which will also utilize the new Qualcomm Wear 3100 chip, absolutely will.