All posts tagged: telecom

Truecaller clashes with India’s telecom regulator over anti-spam rules

Truecaller clashes with India’s telecom regulator over anti-spam rules

Published by skeptic

Truecaller has opened a public fight with India’s telecom regulator over rules governing caller ID apps, saying the country’s anti-spam framework is making it harder to protect consumers from unwanted calls in its biggest market. On Wednesday, CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala (pictured above) took to X to publicly challenge the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), accusing the watchdog of preventing Truecaller from displaying community-reported spam information for calls from the country’s dedicated 1400 and 1600 number series, a restriction he said had enabled abuse of those numbers and eroded trust in legitimate business calls. The dispute stems from a framework introduced in 2024 under which India’s telecom authorities designated the 1400 and 1600 number series for commercial communications, with businesses using the former for telemarketing calls and the latter for service- and transaction-related calls. TRAI later mandated the migration to the dedicated numbering series, saying the move would help consumers identify legitimate business communications and curb spam and scam calls. The framework was rolled out amid growing concerns over spam and scam calls in India, …

The Korean Telecom Giant at the Center of Anthropic’s Mythos Controversy

The Korean Telecom Giant at the Center of Anthropic’s Mythos Controversy

Published by skeptic

The Trump administration’s move to impose export controls on Anthropic’s most powerful AI technology followed a spat over the company granting South Korean telecom giant SK Telecom access to its Claude Mythos model, according to people familiar with the matter. US officials were concerned about what they alleged were SK Telecom’s ties to China, those people said. Those concerns appear to have compounded when Amazon later flagged vulnerabilities it identified in Fable 5 to the White House. Fable 5 is a highly safeguarded version of Mythos that Anthropic released to the public on June 9. The Amazon researchers claimed that it was possible to circumvent some of Fable 5’s guardrails and access Mythos’ formidable cybercapabilities, though Anthropic and outside cybersecurity experts have argued these risks are not unique to Claude. The confluence of events is what ultimately led the White House to determine that it could not trust Anthropic to safeguard its most advanced AI technology, according to a person close to the administration. On Friday, the Trump administration ordered Anthropic to revoke access to …

Philippines’ Globe Telecom moves ahead with Mynt IPO-related filings

Philippines’ Globe Telecom moves ahead with Mynt IPO-related filings

Published by Sam Flores

June 17 : Philippines-based communications firm Globe Telecom said on Wednesday its board approved two filings related to the proposed initial public offering of its e-wallet unit Mynt with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the local stock exchange. Here are some more details: • Globe Telecom approved filing a registration statement with the Philippine SEC and a listing application with the Philippine Stock Exchange. • The offering is expected to represent about 12 per cent of Mynt’s outstanding shares post-IPO. • Shares will have a par value of 0.03 pesos each. • The shares will consist of both primary and secondary offers. • Mynt, which operates the country’s top e-wallet GCash, aims to raise around $1 billion and is seeking a valuation of at least $8 billion, Reuters reported in May. • The offering, if completed at that size, would rival the roughly $1 billion raised by food company Monde Nissin in 2021, the Philippines’ largest IPO to date. • In a separate statement, Mynt said its board and shareholders also authorised the two …

Indian telecom firm Bharti Airtel to invest .2 billion to expand digital lending

Indian telecom firm Bharti Airtel to invest $2.2 billion to expand digital lending

Published by Sam Flores

Feb 23 : Bharti Airtel will invest 200 billion rupees ($2.2 billion) in its financial arm over the next few years, India’s second-largest mobile carrier by number of users said on Monday, as it steps up its push into digital lending. The capital will be infused into its subsidiary, Airtel Money, which received a non-banking financial company (NBFC) license from the Reserve Bank of India on February 13. Airtel’s expansion comes as competition intensifies in India’s non-bank lending sector, where conglomerates such as Jio Financial Services and established players like Bajaj Finance are scaling up retail credit operations. The move strengthens Airtel’s financial services business as it diversifies beyond telecom into areas such as data centres, cloud and enterprise services. The telecom major will contribute 70 per cent of the 200 billion rupees capital, with key shareholder Bharti Enterprises providing the remaining, Airtel said in a press release. The move “will leverage the large Airtel customer base to build the next growth engine for the company and further diversify its portfolio,” it added. ($1 = …

A bleak year for jobs in the telecom sector in Europe and the US

A bleak year for jobs in the telecom sector in Europe and the US

Published by Sam Flores

Technicians from Deutsche Telekom repair an active 5G antenna in Nuremberg, Germany, on January 21, 2025. DANIEL KARMANN/DPA/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/MAXPPP The axe fell three days before Christmas. On Monday, December 22, Telefonica approved a sweeping redundancy plan affecting 5,500 jobs. For employees, these cuts – which represent one fifth of the historic Spanish operator’s workforce – were a further blow, as the group had already eliminated 3,400 positions in 2024. Its goal is to save nearly €600 million per year starting in 2028. But Telefonica was not the only telecom giant to make sweeping workforce cuts. Many other companies, both in Europe and the United States, took similar cost-cutting measures in 2025, turning the year into a particularly harsh one for workers. In the first half of the year, the British operator BT, another historic company, cut 5,000 jobs. The same was true for its German counterpart, Deutsche Telekom, which let go of 3,300 employees in the third quarter over the course of a year, as well as the Scandinavian operator TeliaSonera, which announced plans to cut …