ESnet has launched the latest iteration of its next-generation network backbone. ESnet6 is the U.S. Department of Energy’s research & development network and is headquartered at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It connects up all the national laboratories, supercomputing centers, researches, and instruments, enabling the processing and sharing of massive data sets. … [visit site to read more]
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A bit of M&A, some R&D, and a couple of interesting technology deployments: … [visit site to read more]
A bit of M&A, some R&D, and a couple of interesting technology deployments: … [visit site to read more]
Nigeria’s Globacom has joined the rush to open payment service banks (PSBs) with the launch of its MoneyMaster PSB offering. MoneyMaster was granted a payment service bank licence by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2020.
MoneyMaster PSB will, like other PSBs, and working in line with CBN regulations, facilitate payment and remittance services within Nigeria, accept deposits from individuals and small businesses, issue debit and prepaid cards, operate electronic wallets and inbound remittances and carry out other services.
To open an account, all the customer needs to do is dial a code and then follow the prompts from any telecommunications network; MoneyMaster PSB is network-agnostic. However, the operator says it will leverage Globacom’s nationwide coverage and many agents in rural and urban areas for its rollout.
As for product branding, the main solution is called G-Kala, which turns a phone into a wallet (the customer’s phone number will be used as his or her account number). With G-Kala a user can receive cash from any mobile app and move money to other accounts.
According to the Nairametrics website, Globacom has said it will be engaging over 100,000 agents and deploying kiosks across the country. Moneymaster will, says the operator, be leveraging mobile phones, PoS, and the web to provide financial services to millions of Nigerians who may otherwise be excluded from the financial system.
Local media outlets point out that Moneymaster’s launch completes the entry of all mobile network operators in Nigeria into the financial services business through services like 9Mobile’s 9PSB, MTN’s MoMo and Airtel’s Smartcash. Another service, Hope Payment Service Bank Limited (Hope PSBank) is described as Nigeria’s premier digital-first bank.
Globacom has said that close to 50% of Nigerians do not have access to a banking service and 82% of Nigerians are currently receiving their income in cash. It has added that its PSB is geared towards the 95% financial inclusion target by 2024 set by the CBN.
Marcello Del Brenna, CEO Prysmian UK, shares his thoughts on the increasingly crowded space available for the UK’s energy transition and the deployment of broadband networks.
Prysmian is using its global experience in broadband rollout to develop smaller, higher quality pre-connectorised products to help networks meet the increasing demand for fibre connections at a time when the UK is experiencing a skills shortage.
Furthermore, Prysmian acknowledge that we’re in the first part of the big full fibre wave and we’re accelerating. In parallel, Prysmian are developing new products – cables, connectorisation, connectivity, to get the cables to the end users’ home – this is the second wave.
This interview was conducted at Connected Britain 2022, the event will return to London in 2023 – find out more here
STACK Infrastructure has unveiled new plans for a major colocation campus in the Frankfurt metro area. The data center builder and operator is preparing to develop a 17-acre property 20km west of downtown Frankfurt am Main into its first data center in this key European data marketplace. … [visit site to read more]
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We’ve met Net AI before but things have moved on for this startup spun out of the University of Edinburgh, including attending MWC earlier this year.
Tell us about your start up
Net AI is a network intelligence company whose mission is to develop a market-leading deep traffic analytics platform that can drastically reduce CAPEX/OPEX/TCO for mobile operators and enable new high-margin revenue streams.
Our customers are mobile network operators, telco OEMs, and professional services companies with a global presence.
What is your USP?
Net AI has developed a family of cloud-native software solutions that build on years of research at the intersection of mobile networking and artificial intelligence conducted at one of Europe’s leading computer science research centres, the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh.
Our key differentiator is a combination of a patent-pending stream decomposition and analytics framework and an AI-based prediction engine, which facilitates real-time and predictive insights into per-service network usage on a real-time basis, fuelling the automation of network and compute resource management. Our products are fully automated, scalable, encryption-agnostic, and deployable with emerging Open RAN and 5G architectures.
What is your relationship with the telecom sector?
We are engaging with 1) mobile network operators who seek to meet their customers’ demand in a cost-effective way using intelligent solutions; 2) cloud computing companies that recognise their customers face new challenges that can be tackled with AI solutions, but AI may not be their core business; and 3) system integrators that seek to understand what services are relevant where, how to automate operations, and how to mitigate high customer churn.
How have you got to your current stage of development?
We raised £750,000 pre-seed investment in October 2021, led by Techstart Ventures, with Nauta Capital, Creator Fund, Old College Capital, and Edinburgh Technology Fund also participating. We also received support through grants from Innovate UK and Scottish Enterprise, and we were part of the AI Post-covid Accelerator funded by the Scottish Funding Council and hosted by the Bayes Centre.
Why did you establish the business?
As networks are increasingly built-in software, we believe real-time and predictive traffic analytics can revolutionise the management and monetisation of mobile networks. In addition, AI-driven traffic insights can drastically improve energy efficiency of mobile infrastructure, which already contributes an important fraction of the global carbon emissions. Not least, we believe everyone should have equal job and education opportunities and affordable mobile connectivity can enable this, which is another reason for establishing our business.
I am an engineer by training and have been a faculty member at the University of Edinburgh for the past 9 years, where I have pioneered the use of deep learning for tackling challenging problems in the mobile networking space. This line of research can bring important commercial and societal benefits, and that’s why I decided to spin-out Net AI.
Who inspired you?
In similar measures: Nikola Tesla (pioneer of the alternating current electrical system and wireless communications), Robert Moog (inventor of the synthesiser), and Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
What does the future hold for your business?
We plan to take a share of the global network automation market, which is expected to exceed $28bn by 2028.
COMPANY CV
HEADQUARTERS: Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 8
LAST FUNDING TYPE: pre-seed
URL: https://netai.tech
FOUNDERS:
Paul Patras
Mark Chapman
Marco Fiore
Net AI will be in the Startup Village at Total Telecom Congress in London on the 1-2 November 2022. Meet them there by requesting your ticket
