Indian digital payments giant Paytm valued at $16 billion in latest funding round

On Monday, Paytm, an Indian digital payments company stated it has raised fresh funds totaling to $1 billion from a group of investors which includes existing backers such as SoftBank’s Vision Fund and China’s Ant Financial Services. The funding round saw Paytm being valued at $16 billion. A fresh investment in Paytm by Japan’s SoftBank’s…

France’s 5G spectrum auction to have a base price of $2.4 billion: Junior Economy Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher

Frances’s 5G spectrum is slated to be sold with a base price of $2.4 billion (2.17 billion euros) – an amount that is significantly more than the figure that was previously recommended by the country’s telecoms regulator Arcep. Earlier last week, wary of heavy investments that will be required for deploying 5G technology, Arcep’s president…

Amazon files lawsuit contesting Pentagon’s $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft

Amazon.com Inc has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims contesting the awarding of an up to $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft Corp by the Pentagon. According to a spokesman for Amazon, the company has filed a complaint and supplemental motion for discovery under seal. “The Complaint and related filings…

Huawei and ZTE being methodically sliced from U.S. telecommunication networks

A group of 15 U.S. senators from both the Republican and the Democratic party have written a letter to the U.S. Commerce Department urging it to suspend issuing licenses to U.S. firms that conduct business with China’s Huawei Technologies Co, citing threats to U.S. national security. The letter also urges the Trump, administration to halt…

Electric scooter maker Superpedestrian raises $20 million in latest funding round

Electric scooter maker Superpedestrian said in a statement that it has raised $20 million for its diagnostic software that can spot impending hardware failure – an area that is of major concern for scooter operators. Although electric scooters have become a popular mode of transport in many cities, with the vehicles breaking down in a…

FBI’s Counterintelligence Division admits to slow response in China’s theft of U.S. intellectual property

During a testimony to the U.S. Senate, the FBI said it wished it had taken swifter action with regard to Chinese recruitment of U.S.-based researchers to transfer intellectual property from American laboratories. The admission by John Brown, assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division at the FBI, backed up a Senate subcommittee report which concluded that…