As Asia continues down the path of digital transformation and its cities get increasingly connected, CommunicAsia and EnterpriseIT 2017 will add brand new feature zones to address the growing need for data security and the budding start-up culture in the region. In addition, the event will also see a bigger augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) segment as the show grows to occupy the whole of Marina Bay Sands for the first time.
Gartner has put a damper on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's plan to create 100 smart cities: Gartner estimates that, by 2020, fewer than 10 percent of India's smart city projects will be of a large-scale, city-wide nature.
The GSMA announced the first details of the 2017 GSMA Mobile World Congress Shanghai, including confirmed exhibitors and sponsors, as well as a range of programs and activities taking place at the annual mobile industry event. Under the theme of 'The Human Element', Mobile World Congress Shanghai will be held from Wednesday, 28 June through Saturday, 1 July 2017 at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre (SNIEC).
Gathered in Bangkok, Thailand, public and private sectors across the ICT industry attended ITU Telecom World 2016. Chinese vendor Huawei showcased its latest ideas and experience in cloud, national broadband networks, ultra-fast wireless communications, and smart devices at its pavilion. The company's president of its Carrier Business Group said Huawei is committed to building a better connected world.
Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Qualcomm that, according ta report in Focus Taiwan, will accelerate Taiwan's pace in developing mobile communications as well as the Internet of Things (IoT).
Cisco and Chinese IT company, Inspur Group, have launched their Chinese joint venture, Inspur - Cisco Networking Technology Co. Ltd, 51 percent owned by Inspur.
India's Reliance Group has formed a strategic partnership with Cisco Jasper (formerly the M2M provider Jasper, acquired by Cisco in March 2016) for the launch of a new venture, Unlimit, dedicated to providing Internet of Things (IoT) services to Indian enterprises.
Telcotech, which is building the Malaysia-Cambodia-Thailand (MCT) submarine cable announced in June 2013, says the able is now expected to be operational by the first quarter of 2017. Meanwhile Singapore-based Super Sea Cable Networks (SEAX), which is building a cable to connect the Eastern seaboard of Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, has announced plans to expand it in two phases to Guam, and NTT Com has opened for service the Asia Pacific Gateway cable.
Google has opened new Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore, housing 1000 staff. Announcing the move on a Google blog, Caesar Sengupta, VP of Google's Next Billion User team, said: 'We need room for 1,000 googlers working on new products and projects across Asia for our users, customers and partners. And we also want more room for the community around us '” the kind of place that's useful for gatherings of developers, students, founders, and kids to connect with googlers and, sometimes, even prime ministers and ministers of trade.
A new report from the GSMA, The Mobile Economy: India 2016 says India has surpassed the USA to become the world's second-largest smartphone market with an installed base of 275 million devices and that, at the end of June 2016, it had 616 million unique users. The report is tipping India to have one billion unique mobile subscribers by 2020.
