News

The 5G-powered solution offers users over 3,000 interactive simulated experiences, from swimming with whales beneath the sea to driving factory forklift trucks

Today, BT has announced the launch of their Immersive Spaces solution, in partnership with virtual training specialist Immersive Interactive.

The Immersive Spaces use projectors to create interactive walls and floors, which can then display any of over 3,000 interactive experiences that are stored in the cloud. Users can interact directly with the experiences by touching the walls, from answering a multiple-choice questionnaire to navigating through a virtual world.

Additional senses can also be incorporated to make the experiences even more immersive, such as the use of smells and emerging haptic technology. The spaces are also compatible with virtual reality, augmented reality, and extended reality technologies and can be used to live-stream video.

Finally, users will be able to create their own tailor-made experiences using the platform, such as bespoke classroom or training experiences.

Speaking to journalists at a live demonstration at BT headquarters earlier this week, Ian Robertson, Technical Principal 5G Solutions at BT, explained that the Immersive Space could be specifically designed and deployed within a dedicated location, like a classroom, or delivered as a temporary mobile unit. Robertson explained that the mobile space – seen in image above – could be folded down to load on a flat-bed truck, with an effective deployment time of under an hour once it reached its location.

“Immersive Spaces bring together EE’s unrivalled connectivity with the very best immersive tech – combining the real and digital worlds to create new benefits for business and public sector organisations,” said Alex Foster, Director at Division X – BT’s business innovation team.

“This technology has the potential to be a game changer for training and development in any industry. Putting the power of immersive content into the hands of customers allows people to experience learning in a completely new way that is targeted specifically to their needs – which can significantly improve information retention and problem-solving skills. It can also enrich remote sales experiences, add a new layer to gaming and sports, and transport people virtually to any location, anywhere, during any point in history.”

While the potential of this technology is surely enormous – with BT exploring use cases for education, healthcare, retail, transport, tourism, manufacturing, construction, and sport – initial interest seems to be driven largely by training and education applications.

Indeed, BT has already deployed its Immersive Spaces at schools – Borders College in Galashiels, Scotland and Cadoxton Primary School in South Wales – with encouraging results.

“The children absolutely love it,” said Hannah Cogbill, senior leadership at Cadoxton Primary School.  “Their favourite one so far is life under the sea. We can’t wait to explore more of the experiences and collections and then begin to develop our own content. We are looking forward to using it to support our children’s development and progression of imaginative writing. But it will also be a great scaffold to support learners with pre-experiences that they might be nervous about – for example catching a train or going on an aeroplane.”

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Press Release

The new center will have more than 100 highly qualified experts by the end of the year, which will grow to more than 300 in three years. These experts will work in coordination with Telefónica Tech’s global operations team.

Telefónica Tech today inaugurated a new Digital Operations Center (DOC) at its Bogotá headquarters, in addition to the one that it opened last year in Madrid, to complement its global Cyber Security and Cloud operations capabilities.

José Cerdán, CEO of Telefónica Tech; Alfonso Gómez, CEO of Telefónica Hispam; María Jesús Almazor, CEO of Cyber Security and Cloud for Telefónica Tech; and Fabián Hernández, CEO of Telefónica Colombia, were some of the company’s executives who attended the opening ceremony. The presentation was also attended by Mauricio Lizcano Arango, Minister of Information and Communication Technologies of the Government of Colombia, and more than 40 representatives of local institutions and companies.

Telefónica Tech’s Colombia DOC has an area of 500 square metres in size and has global capacities to reinforce the operations services in all the countries in which the company is present, especially in the Hispam region and in the USA, as it shares a time zone with many of the countries in the Americas, and this means that it can also provide extended hours of support to customers in Europe.

Telefónica Tech has reinforced its operations team in Colombia and plans for the country’s DOC to have more than a hundred highly qualified experts by the end of the year, and for this to grow to more than 300 in three years. These experts’ services are marketed in the Hispam region through Movistar Empresas. The Colombia DOC team will work in coordination with the professionals that make up Telefónica Tech’s global operations area and will strengthen the network of 11 Security Operations Centers (SOCs) that the company has around the world.

From the Colombia DOC, just as with the Madrid space, Telefónica Tech’s Cyber Security and Cloud operations professionals will monitor and supervise customers’ security and cloud services 24 hours a day, every day of the year, to detect, manage and resolve any incident.

José Cerdán, CEO of Telefónica Tech, said: “This new Digital Operations Center (DOC) reinforces our role as a global technology benchmark for the protection of companies undergoing digital transformation. The experience of our professionals and our comprehensive proposal of Cloud and Cyber Security services allows us to offer customers differential solutions and guarantee high levels of confidentiality, integrity, security and availability of data and assets”.

Extensive global capabilities

The Telefónica Tech team is made up of more than 6,200 professionals of 28 different nationalities and with more than 4,000 certifications in third-party technologies. Of these, 5,500 professionals are from Cyber Security and Cloud operations, who deal with 350,000 security event tickets and around 500,000 alerts per year, of which 13,000 are critical.

Telefónica Tech’s operations professionals supervise the security of more than 15,000 devices and execute around 600 mitigations in industrialised services, such as those aimed at avoiding Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, in which there is a high degree of automation.

In addition, through the digital surveillance service, they manage more than 120,000 notifications that generate more than 6,000 reports and specific investigations, and during the last year they have closed down 8,500 fraudulent sites related to brand abuse and phishing (a type of attack in which someone impersonates an entity or service through an email or instant message to obtain the user’s credentials or information).

Telefónica Tech closed the first quarter of 2023 with revenue growth of 43.5%, reaching 429 million euros, and recording double-digit growth in both the Cyber Security and Cloud division and in the IoT and Big Data division.

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News

Vodafone Health will work with the healthcare sector to facilitate telehealth and co-develop new solutions

The UK’s healthcare sector has something of a reputation for its labyrinthine bureaucracy and its overreliance on outdated technology. In the past few years, however, this is beginning to change, with both the public and private sector proving willing to engage with telecoms and technology companies to help facilitate more streamlined and efficient patient care – especially in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Now, Vodafone is making its commitment to the healthcare sector known with the creation of a new business unit called Vodafone Health, aiming at working alongside the medical sector too “accelerate digital transformation” of the sector and “support the delivery of better patient outcomes”.

The new business unit will be led by industry expert Anne-Marie Vine-Lott.

“I’m really excited to be leading the newly created Vodafone in Health division which will act as a technology advisor and innovation hub for all our healthcare partners and customers,” said Anne-Marie Vine-Lott, Head of Health for Vodafone UK. “Our focus is on supporting health providers to work beyond organisational boundaries. To help them drive better outcomes for patients through better connectivity and the modernisation of technology.”

Vodafone’s growing interested in the healthcare sector has been apparent for many years now. Back in 2020, for example, the operator deployed a 5G private network at the University Hospital Dusseldorf, creating what they said at the time was the first 5G-powered clinic in Europe.

In fact, the formation of the Vodafone Health business unit seems to build on Vodafone’s virtual Centre for Health, which it launched in partnership with Deloitte in 2021. At the time, Vodafone said it would seek to combine its connectivity solutions with Deloitte’s significant experience in the healthcare sector to help develop healthcare solutions and support the sector’s digitalisation.

Vine-Lott was made the Head of the Centre for Health at the end of last year and she will continue to oversee the unit as the Director of the new Health business unit.

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Press Release

Launch to mark Cisco joining Greater Manchester Digital Security Hub

Cisco today announced that it is joining the Greater Manchester Digital Security Hub (DiSH) to support the centre’s ambitions to be at the forefront of cybersecurity and innovation, support economic growth and resilience, and to help make the region a trusted and secure place to live, study, and work.

As part of this collaboration, through Cisco’s Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) programme, Cisco is launching a series of targeted initiatives to tackle the widening cybersecurity skills gap. Dedicated programmes will focus on three key areas: the most vulnerable organisations, the widest gap in the industry, and the future generation who will live and work in the region as it realises its digital ambitions.

The Most Vulnerable Organisations

According to Cisco research, half of small businesses (50%) are underprepared when it comes to cybersecurity, leaving them vulnerable to breaches. A core ambition of DiSH is to future-proof Greater Manchester and bring together industry, start-ups, and small and medium-sized enterprises to develop solutions with real-world application that will enhance public and private cyber resilience and digital security.

As part of its role with DiSH, the centre will become a Cisco Networking Academy specifically to support small businesses with their cybersecurity skills. The programme will include a range of learning opportunities starting with a free, self-paced, mobile-friendly ‘Introduction to Cybersecurity’ course. The aim of the course is to equip learners with a basic awareness of cyber vulnerabilities and an understanding of the core principles of cyber resilience. Once users have completed the course, they will have access to additional learning pathways facilitated by Cisco’s partnership with UCEN Manchester.

Jon Lomas, Cybersecurity Partnership Development Manager, DiSH commented: “We greatly value the opportunity to partner with Cisco, a global leader in cybersecurity, to help deliver the critical skills needed to protect businesses of all sizes from potential attacks in an increasingly complicated threat landscape. Becoming a Cisco Networking Academy will help us to deliver free and easily accessible training for our local business population to help them address the security risks they face.”

The Widest Gap in the Industry

As cybersecurity threats continue to rise, the need for a skilled, diverse cyber workforce is more important than ever. Yet, the global cybersecurity workforce was reportedly short of 3.5 million workers in 2021 and constituted less than 25% women.

Cisco’s latest programme, launched today in partnership with the Open University, ‘Cisco Cyber Camps’, will provide free, remote, self-paced training for students in the UK, aged 13-19, who identify as female or non-binary. The courses will allow young women to learn industry-ready cybersecurity skills, while also engaging in forums hosted by Cisco Networking Academy expert women instructors, attending online webinars, and embarking on soft skills training. Upon successful completion of the course, students will receive a certification that will then allow them to go on to complete advanced cybersecurity qualifications and courses.

There will be four enrolment dates each year in January, April, July, and October. To find out more, or sign up for the next cohort, visit here.

Andrew Smith, Senior Lecturer in Networking, Open University Cisco Academy Support Centre, said: “The rapid expansion of the digital economy has created many more cybersecurity challenges that need to be tackled by organisations daily. We urgently need to close the security skills gap, as job vacancies continue to outweigh available expert talent. We look forward to our continued collaboration with Cisco to support the training of talented women to fulfil these critical roles and boost innovation through gender diversity.”

The Future Generation who Will Live and Work in the Digital City-region

Cisco’s partnerships with the Open University and UCEN Manchester have been designed to equip young people with the cybersecurity skills needed to help Greater Manchester succeed in its ambitions to become an internationally recognised digital city-region, attracting industry investment, connecting communities, and driving the local economy. The partnerships focus on providing:

• Free, self-paced, and online instructor training programmes, led by a consortium of Cisco Networking Academy partners including the Open University and UCEN Manchester, which work around teachers’ busy schedules, as an exciting opportunity to upskill and support their continuing professional development.
• Industry-accredited materials and resources designed for those delivering cybersecurity training to their students, closely mapped to the T-Level curriculum. Aligning the courses with classroom teaching offers students in Greater Manchester vendor-led training that will enhance their future job applications.
• Teacher training and skills-to-jobs learning for pupils in the Dean Trust schools and academies across the Greater Manchester region, as well as further schools supported by UCEN Manchester.

David Meads, Chief Executive, Cisco UK & Ireland, commented: “As Greater Manchester realises its digital ambition, it’s crucial that we equip everyone who lives and works in the region with the awareness, tools, and skills to help improve their security resilience. We’re delighted to be working with DiSH, and its founding partners to do just that.”

This announcement builds on Cisco’s role in delivering the Greater Manchester One Network initiative, designed to provide continued trusted access to everything and everyone in the public sector. As part of this initiative, Cisco will deploy a secure, self-monitoring, region-wide digital infrastructure to help underpin public services in the region.

Want to learn more about the digital transformation of Greater Manchester and the North of the UK? Join the telecoms industry in discussion at next year’s Connected North conference

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