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(Bloomberg) -- Google is working with researchers in Europe to track the spread of the coronavirus using troves of location data gathered from smartphones.The search engine giant is collaborating with academics from the University of Southampton in the U.K., who in turn are working with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, according to several people involved in the project.The location data, which Google collects from location-enabled apps such as Google Maps, has been shared with the researchers in an aggregated and anonymized format. It can’t be used to track an individual person; rather, it shows broad patterns of movement across entire countries over periods of time, according to the people.The data is helping researchers analyze the relationship between travel patterns and transmission rates of the virus within different countries, according to the people, while also providing insight into the effectiveness of lock downs in European countries.“We are looking at inner-city movement across the EU and what it means for controlling Covid-19,” said Nick Ruktanonchai, an infectious disease epidemiologist and lecturer at the University of Southampton. “With the location data, we are testing different scenarios and simulating what might happen if countries don’t end their lock downs in a coordinated way. It’s about buying time. We want to make sure a big second epidemic doesn’t happen months down the line.”Ruktanonchai’s description was confirmed by three others familiar with the project, who requested anonymity.A spokesman for Google pointed to a blog post the company published on Friday, which stated that it was “collaborating with select epidemiologists working on Covid-19 with updates to an existing aggregate, anonymized dataset that can be used to better understand and forecast the pandemic.”The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control didn’t respond to a request for comment.The researchers are also working with telecommunications giant Vodafone Group Plc, Ruktanonchai said, and have combined data from Vodafone’s mobile phone networks with the Google location data in an effort to create more accurate models of movement patterns in Europe.A spokesman for Vodafone Group confirmed that the company was working with Southampton researchers on a project to monitor how the coronavirus might develop in different scenarios.In recent weeks, more than a dozen countries -- including the U.S., U.K., Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, South Korea, Iran and Taiwan -- have turned to mobile phone location data as a method of monitoring people’s movements during the coronavirus pandemic.Two of the U.K.’s largest telecommunications companies – British Telecom and Telefonica UK Ltd – have said that they have provided anonymized location data to the government to support policy planning during the coronavirus crisis. In Austria and Italy, authorities are using location data provided by Telekom Austria and Vodafone to keep tabs on whether people are following restrictions on movement.The data has proved useful in determining whether lock down measures have been successful. However, privacy experts have raised concerns about its use. On Thursday, a coalition of more than 100 human-rights groups issued a joint statement that called on governments not to “disregard rights such as privacy and freedom of expression in the name of tackling a public health crisis.”The work being done in the U.K. not only offers an insight into current movement patterns but also enables the researchers to try and predict future scenarios. “We’re looking at what happens if all countries coordinate lock downs” or end their lock downs at different times, said Andy Tatem, director of the University of Southampton’s WorldPop project, which is leading the research.If countries in Europe don’t coordinate, Tatem said, it could lead to a resurgence of the virus.Teams at Alphabet Inc.’s Google have been working for weeks to find ways to use the company’s large stores of data to assist governments and organizations to manage their response to the coronavirus outbreak, according to two people familiar with those efforts.On Friday, Google announced that it would begin publishing “mobility reports” that show movement trends in 131 countries during the coronavirus pandemic. Google said the reports would document trends across different categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces and residential.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- After closing an industry-altering U.S. wireless deal, Deutsche Telekom AG’s Chief Executive Officer Tim Hoettges now wants to change telecommunication markets closer to home. Europe’s phone industry needs mergers if it wants to build the kind of superior infrastructure needed to compete with bigger rivals in Asia and the U.S., Hoettges said Wednesday. He indicated he’s willing to get the German carrier involved in M&A to achieve that goal. “Europe is too fragmented,” Hoettges said in a phone interview. “Wherever I see a deal or an opportunity for European market consolidation that’s convincing, then I would always look at that with the partners.”Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. unit T-Mobile US Inc. on Wednesday completed its $26.5 billion acquisition of Sprint Corp. after a years-long saga that included a standoff with antitrust officials and a court battle with U.S. states. Hoettges pushed for the combination for years to give the company a stronger vehicle to expand in the profitable U.S. market. T-Mobile’s importance for Deutsche Telekom has grown steadily and it now accounts for about half of sales, up from around a third in 2014.“Our goal is to become the number-one in the U.S. market,” Hoettges said.T-Mobile and Sprint scrapped a previous plan to merge in 2014 after meeting resistance in Washington. Their second attempt failed in late 2017 when Hoettges and Masayoshi Son, the chairman of Sprint’s parent company SoftBank Group Corp., couldn’t agree on how to structure control of the combined entity, people familiar with the matter said at the time.Hoettges brought the merger back from the dead a few months later. On Jan. 1, 2018, he took out his phone and tapped out an SMS to Son, wishing him a happy New Year and expressing regret that the merger hadn’t happened. It reignited a conversation that culminated in Wednesday’s deal.It frees Hoettges to focus on markets in Europe, where more than 100 wireless carriers vie for airwaves and customers. Outside Deutsche Telekom’s business in Germany, where it competes with Vodafone Group Plc and Telefonica SA, Deutsche Telekom has units in countries from Poland to the Netherlands and Romania.“Of course I was very much focused on America,” Hoettges said. “But I will work with verve on changing the regulatory and antitrust-law framework” in Europe to help bring about the consolidation the region needs, he said.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- U.K. officials are in talks with mobile network operators about using their data to aid government efforts to repatriate Britons stranded abroad because of the coronavirus crisis, said three people familiar with the matter.Britain’s four mobile phone companies and the government are discussing how to use customer roaming data to help charter rescue flights, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. Roaming bills could be used to work out how many customers are in different countries, two of the people said.Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said March 30 the government has made arrangements with airlines to fly home “tens of thousands” of Britons stranded abroad, when it’s not possible for them to return by commercial flights.BT Group Plc, Vodafone Group Plc, Telefonica SA and CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd. are working with the data regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office, to ensure compliance with data protection laws, one of the people said.Spokespeople for Vodafone and Telefonica’s O2 referred inquiries to industry lobby group Mobile U.K., which said operators are doing what they can to assist government during the pandemic. A BT spokesman declined to comment. A spokeswoman from CK Hutchison’s Three said the company is in discussions with the government on how it can best assist its efforts to fight the spread of the coronavirus. Spokespeople for the Foreign Office and the ICO weren’t able to provide immediate comment.Raab advised citizens to return to Britain on March 23. The number of canceled flights and grounded planes since then prompted the government to pledge 75 million pounds ($93 million) to arrange transportation for those unable to use commercial routes.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- South Africa’s biggest mobile phone companies have been asked to help track the movement of people days before a national lock-down as authorities grow concerned that they may spread the coronavirus to remote parts of the country.The National Institute for Communicable Diseases, which is spearheading the government’s response to the outbreak, wants the information so that it can better prepare for the next areas most at risk. So far, most confirmed cases have been in or near major urban areas and linked to affluent travelers returning from Europe.The three-day gap between President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement of the shutdown and its implementation gave people ample time to travel. Many South Africans work in Gauteng, the economic hub in which Johannesburg is located. The province has about 40% of all the country’s 1,170 confirmed cases.“One of the unintended consequences of a lock-down is migration and that means transmission,” said Nandi Siegfried, an independent clinical epidemiology consultant in Cape Town. “The whole point of a lock-down is to restrict movement.”Case SpikeRemote areas of the country that have so far been spared the virus, including rural parts of KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, could be affected and see a spike in cases in two to three weeks, health experts say.The request “is for high-level aggregated data on how people are moving to help curb the spread of Covid-19,” said Byron Kennedy, a spokesman for Vodacom Group Ltd., the biggest provider of mobile phone services to South Africans. “This does not include personal information or information that identifies a specific individual” and won’t breach privacy laws, he said.MTN Group Ltd., Vodacom’s biggest rival, said it will also avail its “mobility information” to the government.Still, it would have been difficult to put the lock-down in place more quickly, said Kerrin Begg, a senior lecturer in health leadership and management at Stellenbosch University.“This is always a balancing act; there is no right answer,” Begg said.NICD communications manager Sinenhlanhla Jimoh and Presidency spokeswoman Khusela Diko didn’t immediately answer calls made to their mobile phones.(Adds confirmed case number in third paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- With so many workers videoconferencing from home -- while their children stream videos and play Fortnite -- the internet is creaking at the seams, according to Nokia Oyj.The junctions between different internet networks are close to being overwhelmed, the Finnish telecom equipment company said in a weekly report seen by Bloomberg News.“Globally, service providers are starting to see the increased strain and are approaching the capacity on some peering links and edge routers,” Nokia said.But don’t panic yet: Operators can sidestep major jams and outages by rapidly upgrading equipment and adding components at these bottlenecks, according to the company, which likened it to a supermarket hiring more cashiers for busy times.“They can add more capacity, which is easily done,” Nokia said. “Networks are handling traffic well -- so far.”Nokia’s analytics service, dubbed Deepfield, also found a 300% surge in remote-conferencing programs like Zoom and Skype in the U.S. compared with the previous week. Video games, meanwhile, soared 400%.Netflix Inc.’s decision last week to cap its video quality has eased a lot of pressure. The Los Gatos, California-based company accounts for a big chunk of downstream internet traffic in the U.S. and other countries. But its total data flow on March 21 was a third lower than the week before, even while the number of individual streams had increased 6%.Telecom giant Vodafone Group Plc bulked up its U.K. networks’ capacity earlier this month to “minimize congestion at particularly busy aggregation points,” said the head of its U.K. business, Nick Jeffery. Rival carrier BT Group Plc describes its backbone network, which underpins most of Britain’s home connections, as “petabit class,” and its engineers say it can also add capacity quickly.(Updates with additional context from BT and Vodafone at end)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Vodafone will raise its prices for UK customers by 2.5 per cent next week against a backdrop of economic turmoil triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. The telecoms company said it was following its rivals in applying an increase that reflects the Retail Price Index with EE, O2 and Three already having said they would raise charges by between 2.2 per cent and 2.7 per cent. Sky and BT have also increased prices on some broadband products in recent weeks. “Vodafone was caught between a rock and a hard place,” said Matt Howett, founder of Assembly Research, noting that although the company was simply later than its rivals in raising prices its timing was poor.
Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Orange and five other telecoms providers have agreed to share mobile phone location data with the European Commission to track the spread of the coronavirus, lobbying group GSMA said on Wednesday. The companies, including Telefonica, Telecom Italia , Telenor, Telia and A1 Telekom Austria met with EU industry chief Thierry Breton on Monday. The Commission will use anonymised data to protect privacy and aggregate mobile phone location data to coordinate measures tracking the spread of the virus, an EU official said.
(Bloomberg) -- The organizer of the world’s biggest mobile technology conference, MWC 2020 in Barcelona, will offer refunds or discounts to future gatherings to the tens of thousands of attendees and companies that had paid to attend February’s canceled event.MWC was an early major casualty of the coronavirus pandemic, and it had never been scrapped in its 33-year history. By removing it from the calendar, telecom heavyweights lost a significant opportunity to generate marketing buzz around their latest wares. The industry’s biggest players often spend tens of millions of dollars to exhibit at the show, and smaller ones pay in the hundreds of thousands.On Wednesday the GSMA, the trade body for the mobile technology industry, said in a statement it will offer full refunds to all attendees for the cost of their tickets, which cost 799 euros ($865) for a basic admissions pass. For large exhibitors, the GSMA wants to incentivize discounts on attending the show in future years as an alternative to claiming large refunds.Mats Granryd, the director general of the GSMA, said in an interview with Bloomberg at the time MWC was canceled that the trade body was “looking for solidarity” and everybody bearing their own costs.It looks like that may be happening, to some extent. Some large operators have already expressed to the GSMA their intention to participate in MWC next year, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation. These include Orange SA, Telefonica SA, Vodafone Group Plc and NTT Docomo.Larger companies will get the option of receiving a credit worth 125% of what they paid to exhibit at this year’s show, which will be applied as a 65% discount on the cost of attending next year, plus 35% and 25% discounts on the two subsequent years respectively.Alternatively, they can claim refunds equivalent to 50% of their spend for MWC 2020, up to a maximum of 150,000 pounds ($178,000).For smaller exhibitors -- those who spent up to 5,000 pounds -- a full refund will be offered. However, these firms can also opt to waive a refund and instead be granted a 125% credit and three years of discounts.Companies that had canceled their attendance prior to the GSMA calling of the show will be offered credits and discounts, but not cash refunds.The GSMA’s board is made up of executives from a number of the world’s biggest operators, including Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom AG, who agreed to the initial cancellation. The GSMA isn’t expecting its operator members to seek refunds.About 80% of the GSMA’s annual budget is derived from the money it generates from MWC Barcelona, according to two people familiar with the group’s budget.But internally, executives don’t consider the cancellation of MWC 2020 and Wednesday’s offer of refunds to be an existential threat, according to an executive with direct knowledge of board-level conversations who didn’t want to be named discussing private matters.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Virgin Media will employ 500 new call-centre staff in the UK to deal with the impact of coronavirus in countries including India and the Philippines where offshore workers handle customer service calls. The move is the first sign that the telecoms industry is moving to address the potential issue of offshore workers no longer being able to handle calls at a time when the number of customers calling to complain of issues or to upgrade to faster services has boomed. Companies including Vodafone, Virgin Media, BT’s Openreach and Three use offshore call centres in India and other locations and have had to prepare for the disruption caused by coronavirus restrictions in those countries.
Alphabet Inc's YouTube said on Friday it will reduce its streaming quality in the European Union to avert internet gridlock as thousands of Europeans, constrained by the coronavirus outbreak, switch to working from home. YouTube is the second company after Netflix to act after EU industry chief Thierry Breton urged streaming platforms to cut the quality of their videos to prevent internet overload. The move came after Breton spoke to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.
The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. - A review into whether executives at Britain's Lloyds Banking Group covered up a 1 billion pound ($1.16 billion) fraud is due to be completed by the end of the year, more than three years after it was commissioned. - The UK-listed drug group Ergomed Plc has announced it is working on a study of a potential treatment for COVID-19.
MILAN/BERLIN, March 18 (Reuters) - Mobile carriers are sharing data with the health authorities in Italy, Germany and Austria, helping to fight coronavirus by monitoring whether people are complying with curbs on movement while at the same time respecting Europe's privacy laws. The data, which are anonymous and aggregated, make it possible to map concentrations and movements of customers in 'hot zones' where COVID-19 has taken hold.
(Bloomberg) -- Officials in Austria and Italy are starting to use location data transmitted by mobile phones to determine the effectiveness of their coronavirus lockdowns.Telekom Austria AG, the country’s biggest telecom network operator, is providing “anonymized data” to relevant authorities, according to a statement late Tuesday. The tracking technology, developed by Invenium Data Insights GmbH in Austria’s southern city of Graz, was previously used to analyze travel patterns.Vodafone Group Plc said in a statement it is providing Italian officials with anonymized customer data to track and analyze population movements in the hard-hit Lombardy region, where people are in lockdown.The countries are the latest on a growing list of nations using mobile phones to help contain the pandemic. Companies in China, Israel and Vietnam are also using data and applications to keep track of the disease. In the U.S., Alphabet Inc.’s Google is developing a platform that includes user location.Operators have to tread carefully as European countries have some of the world’s strictest rules around the use and sharing of mobile phone location data. The data yielded by these initiatives won’t be as granular as that provided by Israel’s NSO Group Ltd.. The company, known for its spyware, is working with about a dozen countries to test its technology to track the mobile phones of infected people. That information can then be matched with location data of other citizens to determine the potential for contamination.The technology being used in Austria is normally used to track where tourists go after they visit an important destination, according to the Telekom Austria statement. It is “offered by a large number of companies across Europe and has been tested for years.”Invenium estimates that movement in Austria has fallen by half since lockdown measures took effect this week, co-founder Michael Cik told state broadcaster ORF. The company didn’t respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment.Vodafone is also offering governments the ability to send texts to people living in areas that have been hit by the virus. The company operates in 24 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Vodafone, the world's second largest mobile operator, said the coronavirus crisis was causing data traffic on its networks to surge, with demand already rising 50% in some markets. The British company, which announced a plan on Wednesday to maintain network service and provide capacity for critical government functions in Europe, said it expected data use to continue to increase. Vodafone's European networks include Italy and Spain, which have been hit hardest by the virus in Europe, as well as Germany, its biggest market, and Britain.
LONDON/BERLIN, March 17 (Reuters) - Some European telecoms operators reported connectivity problems on Tuesday as millions of people logged on for work at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, driving up data traffic by as much as 30% and testing networks. Governments from Spain to Austria have imposed strict lockdowns to curb the spread of the new coronavirus. At the same time, more calls are being placed over mobile networks rather than data-driven chat services like WhatsApp, as people check in with elderly relatives who are most at risk from coronavirus but less likely to use messaging apps.
Moody's Investors Service, ("Moody's") has assigned a B2 corporate family rating (CFR) and B2-PD probability of default rating to Helios Towers plc (HT), the new holding company of the group and has withdrawn the B2 CFR and B2-PD probability of default ratings assigned to Helios Towers, Ltd. At the same time, Moody's has affirmed the B2 rating assigned to the $600 million senior guaranteed notes due 2022 issued by HTA Group, Ltd. (HTA). The rating outlook is stable.
Coronavirus is probably the 1 concern in investors' minds right now. It should be. On February 27th we published an article with the title Recession is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW. We predicted that a US recession is imminent and US stocks will go down by at least 20% in the next 3-6 […]
The government defeated a rebellion in parliament by lawmakers in the ruling Conservative Party over the role of Chinese technology company Huawei in the development of Britain's 5G networks. Rebel Conservative lawmakers had proposed a change to the Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill, which would have required Huawei to have been eliminated from the country's 5G networks by Dec. 31 2022. Parliament rejected the amendment, with the government winning the vote by 306 to 282.
Vodafone and Telecom Italia (TIM) on Friday secured conditional EU antitrust approval to create Europe's biggest mobile towers company, part of a strategy to roll out lucrative 5G services. The European Commission said Vodafone and Tim will make available to rivals 4,000 towers in cities with more than 35,000 people as part of concessions to address competition concerns, confirming a Reuters report on Thursday. Under the deal announced in July last year, Vodafone will transfer its Italian mobile masts to INWIT, which is 60% owned by TIM.