Brnabic said that as early as the first grade, children are introduced to algorithmic thinking and she recalled that in 2017 programming became an obligatory subject since the fifth grade of elementary school. Since 2017 we have started with the introduction of digital textbooks and digital classrooms and the plan is to fully digitise all our schools and the educational system by the end of 2022, the Prime Minister stated. She noted that retraining of employees for the field of IT is an excellent example of how the state takes care of the digital literacy of the people of all ages and added that until now over 2,000 candidates underwent the retraining and that this process is ongoing. Speaking about the digital connectedness, the Prime Minister explained that the goal is to provide broadband network for 99 percent of households in Serbia by 2025. According to her, over the past five years Serbia achieved an incredible success in the field of digital transformation of the government.

UK broadband usage more than doubled in 2020, largely due to home working in lockdown, live-streamed sport and updates to video games such as Call of Duty, a new report reveals. One petabyte equals one million gigabytes (GB). On average a 4K film stream uses about 7.2GB per hour. Boxing Day was named the busiest day of the year for broadband – when a record 210PB was consumed across Openreach's networks – due to a combination of video calls to catch up with family and the lure of online entertainment. This year, network usage on Christmas Day was nearly double that of last year – 181PB compared with 96PB.

Earlier this year a new initiative to create standards for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in the cable telecommunications industry was launched. The working group, which draws members from both inside and outside of cable including giants like IBM, is exploring how AI and ML can be leveraged to make the network more efficient. Using machine learning to solve this challenge, an algorithm considers multiple variables including service load and cost to provide an actionable and prioritized report for the cable operator to act on. By applying ML to automate node splits, the network will run more efficiently, and customers will continue to receive their high-speed services without interruption as the network grows. The working group is also looking at creating standards to control video piracy by applying artificial intelligence on the network that detects signatures of bad actors.

"Nokia's AI driven access analytics solution has given us the ability to proactively address issues, reducing customer calls by solving multiple issues in a single intervention and creating overall efficiencies in our troubleshooting process." High-resolution video, cloud services and the multiplication of connected devices require higher bandwidth as well as increased reliability. Today, for the copper medium to remain competitive relative to fiber, a similar quality of experience is expected from both an end-user and maintenance perspective. This is especially true given the uptake of Fiber in Europe, which stands at less than 50% for home subscribers. As a Tier-1 European service provider, POST Luxembourg was looking to improve the overall performance of its copper troubleshooting process to reduce OPEX and improve satisfaction among its customers.

These are just some of the headline-grabbing technologies that could be part of our lives once fifth-generation, or 5G, mobile networks roll out, telcos say. A pilot network in the one-north district is in the pipeline, announced jointly by Singtel and Ericsson in July. M1 will start South-east Asia field trials, and StarHub plans to switch on 5G base stations, both by year-end. But experts and industry players acknowledge that there may be a long road to 5G coverage in Singapore, not least because the dots that are to be connected aren't all in place yet. While the propounded benefits of 5G include higher data volumes and speeds, some raise eyebrows at holding trials and building infrastructure for a system not yet in place.

The lack of diversity at tech companies is well-established: Less than 10 percent of workers at Google and LinkedIn are non-Asian minorities, for example, and only 31 percent of employees at Google are women. But the technology industry is guilty of another serious blunder that hasn't spurred the same volume of national conversation: a lack of interest, and failure to invest, in the capacity of small and mid-sized cities to shape technology's evolution. Adrian Perkins (@Diplomatofthe8) is a third-year student at Harvard Law School, founder of the marketing tech company E.merge, and strategic technology advisor to his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana. Many of the best-known tech companies were launched and remain headquartered in Silicon Valley, a region that's home to 3 million people. Tomorrow's tech ideas are also being tested in larger cities: witness AmazonFresh Pickup (Seattle) and Uber's autonomous vehicle trials (San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Tempe, Arizona); although smart city initiatives are taking off in smaller cities, the larger cities still have more than their share of smart city projects, not to mention the media coverage that perpetuates larger cities' market advantage.

Another week, another IBM acquisition: This time, a cloud consulting and implementation services specialist called Bluewolf Group. IBM (NYSE: IBM) said Thursday (March 31) the acquisition would help extend its analytics, cloud consulting and "experience design" capabilities. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed, but reports pegged the deal at about 200 million. Upon completion of the transaction, which is expected by the end of the second quarter of this year, IBM said Bluewolf would become part of its Interactive Experience unit focusing on offering consulting services for clients adopting Salesforce offerings via the cloud. The deal is intended to boost the IBM unit's customer experience and data integration platforms while adding a cloud consulting capability.