SureCall’s SpeedLink extends C-band 5G signals inside large buildings to fill coverage gaps, increase network capacity, and deliver ultra-fast data speeds up to 1 Gbps without fiber. With MIMO or SISO compatibility, the flexible design allows it to deploy quickly and economically inside many types of buildings including offices, government facilities, education and medical campuses, MDU’s, retail and grocery stores, and other commercial spaces to significantly expand and improve 5G signal indoors.

“We are thrilled to announce SpeedLink which adds to our ever-expanding portfolio of FCC-certified 5G signal boosters. We have carefully engineered and thoroughly tested it for rapid deployment to extend the coverage footprint of a C-band base station within hours without the need for fiber backhaul.” said Hongtao Zhan, CEO and founder of SureCall. “As an Authorized Verizon 5G Signal Booster Vendor, we worked closely with Verizon to ensure that the new SpeedLink exceeded all technical standards the carrier required for its network.”

With high capacity and low latency, cellular carriers leveraging C-band spectrum can transmit faster data and connect more simultaneous users with 5G base stations. Zhan continues, “High-speed 5G wireless connectivity offers businesses a way to seamlessly connect wireless devices with point-of-sale systems and mission-critical communications. C-band also supports new and emerging technologies that depend on fast wireless connections to transfer large amounts of data in real-time, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and augmented reality. SpeedLink truly is a gamechanger.”

The versatility and flexibility of SpeedLink is unmatched. It ships as a Verizon C-band compatible system and is equipped with features that enables it to boost the wider 3.7-3.98 GHz C-band spectrum, for those looking to futureproof and install one system that covers multiple carriers. The system is also scalable and can be installed in tandem with existing 4G/LTE 5-band booster systems for full cellular coverage inside the building.

C-band 5G spectrum coverage is rolling out nationwide and is currently available to more than 200 million people in over 350 markets allowing mobile users to stream live video, download movies instantly, video-conference, and take advantage of new gaming and immersive opportunities. C-band also supports Voice-over-New-Radio-5G (VoNR-5G) as that network technology rolls out. This market expansion provides a rapidly growing market for SpeedLink, an enterprise class C-band booster.

SpeedLink 5G (part# SC-5G-CB) is available for purchase and immediate deployment from a select group of SureCall’s distribution partners including Tessco and Graybar. SureCall has an extensive portfolio of patented FCC-certified wireless solutions that optimize 5G network performance indoors.

The SVR app provides order confirmation, site addresses and hardware requirements to field technicians, with step-by-step instructions for proof of delivery, sharing site photos and templates. It provides a digital track record with GPS logs that confirm engineers are on site and meeting enterprise customer needs. The SVR app enables SmartCIC to check the status of deliverables and make instant changes while an engineer is on site, accelerating deployment times and avoiding costly delays.

“We’re continually finding ways to work smarter and add value for engineers in the field, our carrier partners, and their enterprise customers. We developed the SVR app to add another layer of visibility and control to our ‘Through the Line’ connectivity offering and disrupt legacy field services processes. If you can’t deliver critical data in real-time, you can’t move at the speed of today’s enterprises,” said Toby Forman, CEO and Co-Founder at SmartCIC Global Services. “The SVR app is license-free and designed to remove the friction and complexity from deploying, managing and maintaining local connectivity across the globe.”

SmartCIC’s ‘Through the Line’ connectivity solutions combine international wholesale services, local networking, access technologies, shipping and logistics, and onsite field services to deliver a unified end-to-end approach to connecting applications and services. Carrier and service provider partners can efficiently expand their capabilities with a model that has been purpose-built to enable them to monetise the opportunity in enterprise networking locally across the globe. By combining field services and access technologies, deployment times can be cut by two-thirds compared to legacy delivery models.

“Teams at our global support centres can review data and documents sent from the field in real-time and share it directly with customers. They can confirm to partners that orders have been actioned and provide immediate proof of delivery. This solves key customer pain points and gives carrier and service provider partners peace of mind and ensures that they can deliver for local enterprises across the globe. When you have this level of control and visibility, you can move faster with greater reliability and accountability, and this is what enterprises need,” said Forman. “This is just one of many digital innovations we’re working on as we optimise the enterprise networking ecosystem.”

SmartCIC has been serving Tier-1 carriers, Fortune 500, and FTSE 100 companies for more than 15 years. It works with some of the largest players in international telecoms and manages multi-market deployments across thousands of enterprise sites globally.

Retailers that sell age restricted products online are often deemed higher risk by legacy payment processors due to increased fraud associated with these items. This often leads to significantly higher processing rates and chargebacks, all which drag on retailers’ bottom lines. Vroom has worked with leading payment and fraud prevention companies to solve this problem while still lowering costs.

By leveraging Finix’s vertically integrated payment solution combined with other third-party machine learning fraud prevention systems, Vroom is able to drive down the risk of offering these items online and consequently offer significantly below market processing rates for them. Pay360 is nearly 25% below standard rates by major players such as Stripe or Braintree, and over 40% cheaper than most high-risk processors, with an average chargeback rate of less than 0.1%.

“Finix is thrilled to announce its partnership with Vroom Delivery, aiming to drive down their processing costs while enhancing transaction insights to their processing solution” said Richie Serna, CEO of Finix. “This collaboration marks a significant step forward in empowering retailers with a streamlined payment solution, ultimately fostering a payment stack of greater efficiency and financial clarity. We are excited for the Pay360 launch and are looking forward to bringing transparency to an industry which has been underserved by legacy processors.”

Additional benefits of Pay360 include much faster refund times than legacy payment solutions that typically take several business days to settle, which is important for c-stores where inventory data is not always accurate and need ability to adjust orders due to out of stocks. This significantly reduces customer service overhead and improves customer experience.

“We tailor every aspect of our business to the convenience store industry” said John Nelson, CEO of Vroom Delivery. “In the past this has meant things like online SNAP/EBT, cost effective white label fulfillment, and our automated menu management system. By adding Pay360 to the mix, retailers can confidently sell every item in their stores at a cost and level of security unmatched in the industry.”

In a statement, Vodafone Business explained the app is designed to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with limited resources automate time-consuming and costly tasks, offering a range of services it claimed often comes at a premium from other providers.

These services include online booking and scheduling tools, a centralised hub to streamline communications and transactions with customers, as well as to launch marketing campaigns.

The app will run on vcita’s platform which has been developed alongside small enterprises and partners over the past 12 years, and is already available in Italy before a wider European launch.

Interim CEO at Vodafone Business Giorgio Migliarina said its goal was “to become the trusted partner for all companies, both small and large, on their digital journey”, adding the collaboration with vcita forms part of its investment in digital products targeting SMEs.

The operator group identified SMEs as the driving force behind economic development, contributing 55 per cent to the European Union’s GDP. However, its research found 84 per cent of these businesses still rely on manual processes in their daily operations.

Vodafone Business added it provides a roster of apps and digital services to support enterprise digitalisation, available on its cloud-based marketplace.

Pega GenAI Blueprint, available for early adopters, equips business leaders to transform app ideas into interactive ‘application blueprints’ for easy understanding and collaboration among stakeholders.

The process involves users describing the app’s purpose, with Pega GenAI Blueprint guiding them through workflow elements, capturing feedback, and facilitating collaboration. The Pega GenAI engine leverages industry knowledge to design optimised application blueprints, encompassing workflow processes, data models, and integrations. Once finalised, the blueprint integrates seamlessly into the Pega Platform, creating an enterprise-grade, cloud-architected workflow application.

The tool offers benefits such as agile workflow design, drawing on Pega GenAI’s ability to suggest optimal designs from simple descriptions. It synthesises the company’s extensive repository of workflow best practices, providing a nearly complete design starting point. Rapid app deployment follows the finalisation of the blueprint, with further modifications easily handled within the tool.

“The benefits of generative AI extend to developers and end-users, improving productivity through query-based interactions, automatic summarisation, and streamlined case lifecycle generation,” Deepak Visweswaraiah, vice president, of platform engineering and site managing director, Visweswaraiah told AIM, in a previous conversation.

The first prediction highlights Meta’s potential change in direction. It suggests that the metaverse will find its initial value in enterprise and educational settings, possibly indicating a strategic pivot towards increasing adoption of their Quest VR headset hardware by businesses.

Furthermore, the post seemingly acknowledges the decline in metaverse hype, calling it “dead” and contrasting it with the rising interest in AI. While acknowledging consumer interest in the metaverse, evidenced by the Quest app’s performance on the App Store, Meta emphasizes business applications like collaborative computer-aided design tools. This suggests a potential reorientation of their metaverse strategy towards enterprise needs.

Meta’s second prediction focuses on “portable artificial intelligence,” specifically onboard large language models (LLMs). Unlike powerful systems like ChatGPT and Claude, which rely on cloud connectivity, onboard LLMs could operate directly on devices. This approach could allow Meta to integrate metaverse hardware with augmented reality (AR) to create informative heads-up displays for everyday use.

Finally, the third prediction emphasizes the importance of business messaging tools within the metaverse. “People expect to interact with brands and businesses they support in new, more personal ways,” the blog post emphasizes. This could signal a potential future where brands interact with consumers within the metaverse through AI-powered tools and engaging experiences.

Announcing the new feature in a post, Google said, “We’re launching a more precise way for you to tune Gemini’s responses. Starting in English in the Gemini web app, just select the portion of text you want to change, give Gemini some instruction, and get an output that’s closer to what you are looking for.” The feature is being added to offer more control to users’ creative process by letting them make changes to a small part of the response instead of regenerating it entirely.

Once a response for a prompt has been generated, users can select and highlight any part of the text. Highlighting it now will show a pencil icon in a circle. The Gemini logo also appears next to the pencil. Hovering the arrow over the icon brings the description “Modify selected text. Clicking on this icon shows four options — Regenerate, Shorter, Longer, and Remove.

The options work as the name suggests. Regenerate will change the portion of the text and it will be generated again. Shorter and Longer increases or decreases the length of the topic, and Remove deletes it entirely. Further, users can also add a prompt for that particular portion to modify it as well.

It is a handy feature. Those who have spent time on AI chatbots know that oftentimes, it generates a great response which is ruined by one sentence. So far, the solution to it was to regenerate the entire content or make modifications to the prompt, and repeat it ad infinitum till the desired result appears. Making granular changes via this feature can potentially save a lot of time for users.

“Updating our Zoom integration and introducing LeadReactor represents a significant step forward in our mission to provide businesses with the tools they need to have more effective customer communications,” said Todd Fisher, CEO and co-founder at CallTrackingMetrics. “These new features will help businesses save time and money while improving the customer experience.”

The updated Zoom integration lets users view Zoom calls directly alongside phone calls, chats, texts, and forms in the CallTrackingMetrics dashboard. This holistic view allows users to manage all their customer communications from one central hub, making it easier to stay organized, generate comprehensive reports, and, using AI-powered tools like CTM’s AskAI, learn intelligent, previously untapped insights immediately following those meetings.

CTM’s new product, LeadReactor, is a new outbound calling solution that helps to maximize agent productivity by using advanced technology to make calls in the background, while agents focus on other tasks and connect a call to an agent only when a live person answers. This saves hundreds of hours wasted manually calling only to get voicemails, dead air, and hang-ups. It can also leave personalized voicemail messages, further improving the customer experience.

When used with CTM’s AskAI and ChatAI, you can automatically and quickly sift through large amounts of data to qualify and surface the best leads, then automate workflows around the next steps.

In announcing the hearing, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chair Bob Latta (R-OH) said: “In the communications sector, AI could enhance the performance of next-generation networks and vastly improve internet speeds. But with the benefits of AI come potential risks, like enabling cybercriminals to develop potent threats to our critical communications infrastructure. American leadership is vital to ensure the responsible deployment of AI, protect people’s privacy, and unleash the full potential of this technology. We look forward to this subcommittee hearing, where members will hear from industry representatives and other stakeholders about how networks are using AI tools, the risks associated with those tools, and how AI technology can be used to improve our communications systems.”

In his testimony, Yamany explained how:

VIAVI’s suite of tools operates within the network, improving performance, resiliency, coverage, reach, and innovation. Many of these tools have progressively incorporated AI and Machine Learning (ML) techniques to elevate the accuracy and efficiency of network functions and take on tasks that human operators could never have performed.

VIAVI’s AI-powered “digital twin” technology is a powerful tool. By creating a virtual model of a provider’s network in the lab, our AI systems enable real-time adjustments to manage actual network behavior because they’ve seen it before. These digital twins are a pivotal advancement in network design, reliability, and performance; they are an invaluable tool for identifying network issues before they arise; and they enable the timely troubleshooting of operational challenges once the network is deployed and operational.

Transitioning to Open RAN is critical to securing the telecommunications supply chain. VIAVI’s AI tools learn the intricate network traffic patterns and behaviors characteristic of complex 5G, O-RAN, and anticipated 6G wireless networks, and emulate them in the lab. Network operators can virtually build an O-RAN network alongside a digital representation of their existing network and see how they will work together – all before the first component is added.

“It is indisputable that AI, like many significant technological advancements that have come before it, necessitates a discussion of regulations and guidelines to safeguard its operation, ensure security, safety, privacy, and impartiality, and address its direct and indirect consequences. But no two AI technologies are equivalents and each carry different risks, impacts, and implications,” said Yamany as part of his testimony. “VIAVI’s commitment to advancing the application of AI in telecommunications underscores our dedication to fortifying the critical infrastructure upon which the nation relies. We are eager to collaborate and provide insights to ensure that the regulatory landscape surrounding AI appropriately balances innovation, security, and the interests of the American public.”

Offered through The Weather Channel app, weather.com, and an online dashboard, this information is designed to help provide the latest details currently available from various official sources to people and businesses so they can access it easily on their computers or smartphones.

“As the coronavirus causes uncertainty in our daily lives, we are all looking for data to help us make more informed decisions and check on our family and friends in different areas. With that in mind, we feel it’s critical to provide the most trusted information currently available to help people stay informed on the reach of COVID-19,” said Cameron Clayton, general manager of IBM’s The Weather Company. “The Weather Channel is now providing COVID-19 data – so you can see why social distancing matters in your community and why it’s important to heed instructions from your local, state and national resources.”

Citizens, researchers and even government officials can use the data-rich tools to get currently available information from various official sources about the reach of the coronavirus, down to a county level in the United States.

The tools, which run on the IBM public cloud, use IBM Watson to access and analyze data from the World Health Organization and multiple national, state and local governments. This data will be more localized than some other resources currently available – drilling down to the county level in the United States, where available.

Visit weather.com/coronavirus or The Weather Channel app on iOS or Android to see the following:

An AI-enhanced interactive “Incidents Map” of COVID-19 data and stats, including confirmed cases and more by U.S. state and by county, where available.

A trend graph by state in the U.S. to view recent statistics, as well as data over time. Starting with U.S. locations and with additional global data anticipated to follow shortly, the tool will provide trend visualization, interactive mapping, news and information to help track the pandemic.

The latest news and videos related to coronavirus from The Weather Channel editorial team. Additional details such as available public health information, patient education materials, locations of key healthcare clinics and testing centers and more, are anticipated to be added as available.

In addition, an interactive dashboard driven by IBM Watson and built on IBM Cognos Analytics is designed to help users such as data scientists, researchers, media organizations and more conduct a deeper analysis and filtering of regional data. Available global data includes confirmed cases, recoveries where available and more, and users can drill down to the country, region, state and county level as needed to get further insights. This aggregated data could potentially help others collect insights and show how cases are trending over time.

For more information about IBM efforts around COVID-19, visit https://www.ibm.com/covid19 and https://newsroom.ibm.com/covid-19.

For more information about The Weather Company, an IBM Business, visit https://newsroom.ibm.com/the-weather-company. For more on IBM, visit IBM.com.