What’s up in… Global IT outage, SoftBank, Telecom APIs, Security

In today’s industry news roundup: Massive IT outage disrupts industries worldwide after Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to update software; SoftBank invests in Japanese startup to support development of ‘industry-specific AI services that promote coexistence between humans and AI’; new ABI Research analysis defies optimistic expectations about revenue potential of telecom carrier APIs; Andand many more!

A global IT outage has caused hours of disruption to the functioning of many industries today, including disruptions to air and rail traffic and lack of access to services such as healthcare and banking. Reuters reported that that the outage was most likely caused by a software update from global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike that affected Microsoft applications. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said on social media platform X that the outage is not a security incident or cyberattack. “CrowdStrike is actively working with customers affected by the flaw discovered in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not affected,” he noted. The executive confirmed that this was an isolated issue and that a fix had been deployed. Media reports suggest that businesses and organizations could begin restoring their services later that day. CrowdStrike is a leading cybersecurity company with more than 20,000 subscribers worldwide and a market value of about $83 billion, according to Reuters. At the time of publication, CrowdStrike’s stock price was down 9.63% to $310.32 per share.

Japanese telecommunications operator SoftBank participated in a Series B financing round launched by an AI and robotics startup Avatar. The Tokyo-based startup raised a total of 3.7 billion yen ($23.5 million) in the round, which saw five other investors participate, bringing its total funding raised to 7.7 billion yen ($48.8 million). SoftBank explained that it decided to invest in Avatarin because it identifies with the startup’s concept of developing “industry-specific AI services that promote the coexistence of humans and AI.” Following the investment, SoftBank will look for ways to support Avatarin with its offerings, such as native large language models (LLMs) that leverage Japanese datasets and computing infrastructure. The operator will also provide 5G network environments to meet the growing demand for data communications. Find out more.

Despite some bullish forecasts With potential revenues in the hundreds of billions of dollars from telecom application programming interfaces (APIs), the value generated by such APIs is likely to be limited to $13.4 billion – and only if operators plan accordingly, ABI Research he found. Dimitris Mavrakis, senior research director at ABI Research, argued that despite recent bullish trade association forecasts about the potential value of telecom APIs, “it is unlikely that telecom operators will be able to turn these initiatives into commercial successes.” Telecom operators “will have to radically change their mindset, culture and commercial model,” he added. In fact, communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) providers and hyperscalers can “take the burden off telecom operators” and help them commercialize API initiatives. ABI Research identified security APIs as the leading API type in terms of revenue, expected to generate $5.3 billion by 2028, followed by network segmentation at $5 billion and on-demand quality of service at $3.14 billion by the same period. “Even these goals will require significant effort from telcos to at least standardize API exposure across their networks and offer a consistent interface to CPaaS providers and hyperscalers. Camera AND open the gate APIs are a step in the right direction. There is still a lot of work to be done, especially in the technologies that enable these APIs, such as charging, billing, and network orchestration,” Mavrakis explained. Find out if network operator executives from around the world who were recently surveyed for TelecomTV’s New Network API Strategic Reportagree.

AT&TThe company’s chief data officer Andy Markus shared his vision for autonomous agents using generative AI (GenAI) to assist human workers with operations such as network and software code optimization, fraud detection, and customer service. On the blognoted that the U.S. carrier already has autonomous assistants in operation that “can receive fraud alerts generated by our GenAI tools and stop fraudulent transactions before they happen.” AT&T is also exploring ways to use multiple assistants running large language models (LLMs) simultaneously to solve more complex business problems. “To do this, we assign a general orchestrator persona to one assistant, whose job is to coordinate and reason with other assistant personas with more specialized skills,” he explained. Over time, the company hopes to more broadly deploy autonomous agents so that “they become an integral part of helping our employees execute complex operational workflows faster to better serve our customers.” Markus added that customers will likely start to see autonomous agents in their personal lives as well. “Think of them as digital butlers who are there when you need them and can perform a wide range of tasks with minimal guidance,” he wrote.

The end of mid-contract price increases is in sight for UK phone, broadband and pay-TV services! From 17 January 2025, phone, broadband and pay-TV providers “will be banned from including inflation-linked or percentage-based price increases in all new contracts”, the UK telecoms watchdog has said. Ofcom, announced today. Firms will have to inform customers in advance of any price increases they include in their contracts. The new rules state that any price increase written into a customer contract from next year will have to be set out “in pounds and pence, in a prominent and transparent place at the point of sale; and suppliers will have to make it clear when any price changes will occur”. This is being introduced to ease the lack of clarity and certainty for customers that has been seen in recent years when many large firms introduced price increases linked to future inflation rates. “With tight household budgets, people need to be certain about their monthly outgoings. But that is impossible if you are tied into a contract where the price could change based on something as difficult to predict as future inflation. “We are stepping in on behalf of telephone, broadband and pay-TV customers to eliminate this practice so that people can be sure of the price they are paying, compare deals more easily and benefit from the competitive market we have in the UK,” said Cristina Luna-Esteban, Ofcom’s director of telecoms policy.

– TelecomTV Employees