Displaying items by tag: pandemic

Zoom Video Communications, Inc. announced general availability of its Zoom Phone cloud phone service in 25 additional countries and territories, as well as a new, drastically simplified telephone service plan for companies with locations across the globe. Zoom now provides local telephone service and domestic calling in over 40 countries and territories around the world.

The new countries and territories where Zoom Phone supports local phone numbers are: Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong SAR, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Mexico, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

This expanded geographic coverage allows Zoom customers to migrate away from their legacy phone systems and consolidate business communications into Zoom’s video-first unified communications platform. To help customers streamline their communication carrier portfolio, Zoom has launched the Global Select plan. With this new plan, a company can purchase domestic calling in 40 plus countries and territories where Zoom provides PSTN service, for a single price.

While many companies with locations around the world are responsible for negotiating telephone service agreements with various carriers, Zoom aims to simplify that process. In addition to local service in 40 plus countries and territories, Zoom Phone provides telephone connectivity covering the world through its Bring Your Own Carrier model, including in markets where telephone service is highly regulated. Zoom will also continue to provide an easy solution for companies that do not require individual direct numbers for every employee. For these customers, the Zoom Phone Pro plan for cloud telephony service is available starting at $8 USD a user per month. “Zoom Phone is changing the game,” said Elka Popova, VP of Connected Work Research at Frost & Sullivan. “Now, with an innovative plan model and availability of its successful Zoom Phone product in 40 plus countries, it will be a compelling option for many multinational customers.”

“As we engage with our customers, they are telling us they want to untangle their global telephony spending and consolidate, much like their move to the cloud,” said Graeme Geddes, Head of Zoom Phone. “In response we developed the Global Select plan and our expansion across the globe.” What Zoom Phone customers are saying: "At ServiceNow, we rely on Zoom daily to keep our global teams, customers, and prospects connected,” said Tomer Mekhty, Vice President of Global IT Operations, ServiceNow. “We’ve been long-time Zoom platform users and we are excited to have the opportunity to add Zoom Phone to Zoom’s full stack of communication and collaboration tools. Zoom Phone enhances our stack of communication and collaboration, covering voice, video, and chat all in one. It makes it possible to transition from voice to video calls seamlessly and achieve an approach to communication that best suits our collaborative and innovative culture.”

“At Cision, our entire team has found Zoom Phone easy to use and very reliable even when network conditions are challenging for our remote workforce,” said Eric Rabuse, Head of Telephony at Cision. “It offers voicemail transcriptions, three-way calling, a centralized portal for managing all voice operations securely, and many other features that our teams enjoy. The intuitive call queues are easy for users to manage and empowers our teams to make adjustments to their call handling without IT assistance. Zoom’s constant innovation across the entire platform puts a smile on our faces as they frequently surprise us with new features and releases. Just when you thought phones were old school, Zoom made them so much cooler with direct integrations into their meetings platform and CRMs we use daily.”

“I am a long-term Farmers Agency owner. Early on, I recognized the potential of cloud phone systems and have used several vendors over the years,” said Kevin Carda, Farmers Insurance Agency Owner. “There was always an issue: frequent inconsistent call quality issues, complex interfaces, modem/router issues, and so forth. Being a recent Zoom platform user, I discovered that they have a cloud phone service and it is superb! I was easily guided through the setup process and they helped me design a call management process that best suited my business. They truly have the perfect solution with voice, video, and chat services in a single intuitive interface and a very responsive support team to help you. I am thrilled with Zoom’s suite of products and their support team, and highly recommend Zoom to anyone looking for cutting-edge communication services at a very reasonable price."

Telecom Review, the leading global telecoms news platform, held a virtual panel on 21 July, attended by 346 participants, to discuss the latest and most pressing issues in the wholesale and capacity space. Telecom Review mobilized an impressively unique panel with representatives from Etisalat, MTN GlobalConnect, PCCW Global, Tata Communications, SES, Orange and GBI.

Following the success of its previous virtual events, the panel titled, ‘Capacity and data traffic: Enabling a seamless experience’, was held at 16:00 UAE time on July 21^st.

The session was moderated by Founder of Telecom Review and CEO of Trace Media, Toni Eid, and the panelists included: Ali Amiri, Group Chief Carrier & Wholesale Officer at Etisalat; Frederic Schepens, CEO of MTN GlobalConnect; Marc Halbfinger, CEO of PCCW Global; Vaneet Mehta, AVP & Region Head- MECAA at Tata Communications; Elias Zaccack, EVP of Global Sales at SES; Cengiz Oztelcan, CEO of GBI and Emmanual Rochas, CEO, International Carriers at Orange.

The globally renowned panelists discussed the management of the sheer amount of data which was generated throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the role of the cloud in ensuring a seamless remote experience and the challenges that COVID-19 posed to the wholesale industry.

Ali Amiri, Group Chief Carrier & Wholesale Officer at Etisalat, said, "Organizations were less concerned about security and remote working because of cloud readiness. Everyone has to be cloud equipped and this showed during the pandemic. This was really quite important that people could connect from anywhere and from any device.”

Frederic Schepens, CEO of MTN GlobalConnect, stated, “When COVID-19 hit our operations, we already had more backups and strengthened networks. In certain markets, we saw 30-35% growth. Voice also increased because people were calling each other to make sure everyone was OK. As an industry, we can do a lot of good to make sure we support all these changes with a reliable, robust infrastructure and also ensure that we facilitate the digitization process.”

Marc Halbfinger, CEO of PCCW Global, said, “The one thing that I’m certain of as a result of COVID-19 is that I’m not certain of anything. The situation has made forecasting an art form. We need to consider as many possibilities as may exist. We don’t know when this issue will be resolved or how governments will deal with it. COVID-19 has demonstrated that anything that is driving new age automation is necessary.”

On the business Impact of COVID 19, Vaneet Mehta, Region Head, Tata Communications, mentioned, “In terms of wholesale segment, we had growth in data traffic, on account of OTT content consumption. But the enterprise segment saw decision making getting delayed.”

Vaneet, was still bullish on the enterprise segment, in markets like Saudi Arabia, UAE and certain select countries of Africa. He also touched upon the recent news of the recent Tata Communications local telecom license in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Elias Zaccack, EVP of Global Sales at SES, said, “Without dismissing the severity of COVID-19, we are seeing is a lot of opportunities.  One of those opportunities is digitization. A lot of countries are moving a lot faster to digitization. What we have realized is just how essential satellites are to the global infrastructure.”

“For many years we’ve been talking about digitalization, we also learnt that most governments are nowhere near being digital especially during the lockdown. We suffered a lot of time wastage in terms of organizing basic processes. Also, security is currently in the back burner because people are just trying to be connected. It’s a good time for us to think about this, but the market will demand better security eventually,” commented Cengiz Oztelcan, CEO of GBI.

Emmanual Rochas, CEO, International Carriers at Orange, said, “This crisis has been dramatic in terms of human impact. It also had a massive impact on our international wholesale business. We have experienced a very strong shift in usage in terms of our businesses. Our networks have either been emptied or overloaded. We have seen an increase in domestic voice whilst international voice suffered. We had a very strong increase in public networks due to increase in consumption of entertainment.”

Huawei has announced its financial results for the first half of 2020 which showed a 13.1% increase year-on-year and a net profit margin of 9.2%.

The tech giant generated CNY454 billion in revenue throughout the first half of the year. As for their carrier, consumer and enterprise business, they achieved CNY159.6 billion, CNY255.8 billion and CNY36.3 billion.

As countries across the world have been dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic as best they can, ICT has become absolutely essential to combatting the virus and containing its spread. Not only that, but it has also become an engine for economic recovery.

Huawei has been at the forefront of innovation, namely during this period which has been characterized by economic uncertainty. They have been key enablers in helping many industries maintain stable network operations, support efforts to contain the spread of the virus, accelerate digital transformation and reopen economies.

Chinese tech giant Huawei announced that its new smartphone will include built-in sensors that can measure body temperature.

The fever can be an early indicator of infection during times like these where the COVID-19 pandemic is a major concern. Huawei intends to integrate this thermometer in the Honor Play 4 Pro phone.

The infrared technology built into the smartphone will have the ability to measure temperatures up to 100 degrees Celsius.

In a video posted on Chinese social media site Weibo, Huawei demonstrated the phone and how the built-in thermometer would work on a person, via pointing the sensors at the individual’s forehead for a few seconds.

While IR sensors are not as accurate as thermal cameras, it is cheap to use and was in fact already integrated into most smartphones for facial recognition unlock and other camera effects. It was due to this that the tech giant was able to react to the pandemic very quickly.

The phone is expected to be available in China for around $420.

Samsung has reported its financial results for the first quarter of 2020 which showed decreased profits due to the pandemic.