Hindsight is 20/20

• The Corona virus begins to dash 2020 hopes. GSMA cancels its Mobile World Congress industry showcase and, in the absence of face-to-face, Nokia announces plans for a series of “live” events, including Real Talk 2020.

• WIRED shares: “The Nikkei Asian Review reports that China is blocking manufacturing giant Foxconn from reopening factories, potentially delaying production of devices from several companies, including Apple, Amazon, and Huawei.”

• For the first time ever, the Academy Award for best picture goes to an international feature film: Parasite. And remember when things like cloying hold music bothered you? Octopus Energy finds a way to solve it, matching your phone number to the date of birth on your account and playing the #1 song from when you were 14.

• Working from home, socializing from a distance, chatting with Grandma – video keeps us together. The world embraces new modes of creation and communication. 

  • 100 artists perform from their living rooms due to the coronavirus lockdown in the One World: Together At Home concert.

  • And Bloomberg reports that CBS will use FaceTime, Zoom and other apps to create an episode of the drama “All Rise”.

• Nokia and U.S Cellular boosting spectrum capacity after FCC decision to expand connectivity due to COVID-19 networking demands.

• Telecom companies keep on keeping up.

• Facebook is connecting with Africa’s young population, announcing news of the 2Africa consortium’s plans to build a 37,000km undersea cable. This will bring faster internet to 16 countries on a continent where only 40% have access to the web.

• And Alphabet Loon is connecting with Telkom Kenya, using stratospheric balloons to reach regions too remote or undeveloped for traditional infrastructure. The HAPS project will connect remote clinics with referral hospitals to assess and manage infections as part of the pandemic response.

• Elon Musk and singer Grimes have a son, name him X AE A-xxii, then explain how to pronounce that name.

• COVID-related food supply fears spur growth in vertical farming. World leader Japan has 200 large-scale ‘farming as manufacturing’ plant factories. China has 80. Market is projected to reach US$7.3 billion by 2025 from US$2.9 billion in 2020.

• Railway giant ÖBB Infrastruktur AG last year transported 270 million+ passengers and 100 million tons of freight. They’re now working with A1 Austria and Nokia in a 4G/5G network slicing pilot to automate train control. This new technique gives customers their own piece of a network pie – a breakthrough in providing low-latency, high-bandwidth for the most sensitive of operations.

• Mining industry goes deep with private wireless networks. The Vale mining operation in Brazil will control autonomous mining equipment such as ore trucks and drill rigs. Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology is automating processes at its test mine in Tampere, Finland, and will use 5G capabilities for remote machine operations over 4K video links between deep underground and the surface control center.

August is a month of goodbyes and hellos:

• After a decade at the helm of Nokia, CEO Rajeev Suri steps down and we welcome Pekka Lundmark who says: “The company is well-positioned for the 5G era and it is my goal to ensure that we meet our commitments to our customers, employees, shareholders and other stakeholders.”

We bid goodbye to other old friends:

• “To better support the high data usage on our network, we are sunsetting our 3G network to boost capacity for next generation technologies," explains AT&T in a statement to Light Reading. All the nation's big wireless network operators are planning the same.

• 1.55 million U.S. pay-TV subscribers flee in Q2 and there are signs of a second more damaging wave due to content redirection by media giants to subscription and ad-supported streaming services, according to MoffettNathanson.

• In its next step to “getting autonomous vehicles on the road and making UK’s transport network greener,” Telefonica’s O2 UK launches the country’s first commercial lab, using 5G from Nokia and satellite communications to test connected and automated vehicles (CAVs).

• Equinix, a giant in interconnecting carrier networks all around the globe, is adding Nokia IP to support those customers as they ramp up 5G services.

• 5G-enabled industries have potential to add $8 trillion to global GDP by 2030, reports Nokia Bell Labs. 5G mature companies are growing faster and are the only group to have experienced a net increase in productivity (+10%) following COVID.

• “Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has accelerated the adoption of telemedicine globally,” reports Frontiers in Public Health, predicting the telemedicine market will grow from US$38,046 million (2018) to US$103,897 million by 2024.

• Lockdown is the word of the year, according to Collins Dictionary. Though “mukbang” is a contender. From the Korean meogneun (eating) + bangsong (broadcast), it means “a video or webcast in which the host eats a large quantity of food for the entertainment of viewers.” 

• Baby Shark passes 7.043 billion views, “which officially makes the kid-friendly, adult-terrorizing earworm the most-watched YouTube video ever,” writes Sean Hollister on theverge.com. The video had 2.5 billion views in April.

• In a not necessarily connected story, YouTube experiences problems and Netflix fills the void. The streaming service sees a 20% growth in peak traffic and returns to normal when YouTube recovers.

• Reuters reports “a team of friendly robots is giving a much-needed boost to both staff and residents at a German care centre for the elderly.”   

• MIT study shows more than 75% of the US contributions to algorithms at the heart of modern inventions (which the US dominates) come from immigrant researchers.

• Even heads of government face technical hurdles as British PM Boris Johnson’s videolink to parliament appears to fail.