What’s in the UK government’s 5G strategy?

The successor to current 4G networks, 5G is slated to come into widespread commercial usage in the early 2020s, and promises vast improvements around reduced latency, browsing and download speeds. As well as a fatter pipe for consumers and businesses to fill with data, 5G also heralds a sea-change in how up-and-coming technologies such as connected vehicles and the internet of things (IoT) are deployed and supported, indeed, some believe that these technologies will only really come into their own once 5G is available.

However, unlike 4G networks, mobile experts agree that 5G will be introduced over a number of years, as an evolutionary process. It is very unlikely that – as with previous mobile generations – there will be a single day when 5G is “switched on”; if everything goes to plan, 4G will evolve seamlessly into 5G.

Indeed, it is already doing so, with many operators looking to deploy gigabit long-term evolution (LTE) technology on their 4G networks as a kind of halfway house.

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Facebook, Instagram: No, you can't auto-slurp our profiles (cough, cough, border officials)

Facebook and its snap-sharing app Instagram have updated their terms and conditions to bar developers from scanning profiles for surveillance purposes.

On Friday a report from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) showed that border patrol officers had tried automatically scanning visa applicants' social media profiles to catch terrorists. The DHS boffins admitted their software didn't work properly, and that it was looking for companies to help improve the system.

With all that government contractor cash floating around, development outfits are no doubt gearing up to cash in. But they'll have to do it without Facebook and Instagram's data feeds.

"Developers cannot 'use data obtained from us to provide tools that are used for surveillance.' Our goal is to make our policy explicit," Facebook said.

"Over the past several months we have taken enforcement action against developers who created and marketed tools meant for surveillance, in violation of our existing policies; we want to be sure everyone understands the underlying policy and how to comply."

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BBC hooks up with ITV, launches long awaited US subscription VoD

Analysis In the end, after a year waiting for the service, BritFlix has become BritBox, an OTT service which the BBC promised a while back, as a follow-on to its failed global iPlayer initiative. This will have been stimulated by the relatively new relationship between AMC Networks and BBC Worldwide – effectively AMC said (to OTT): "Come on in, the water's fine".

The surprise package is that the"awful" ITV player service will also provide its content to the new SVoD, aimed at Anglophiles and expats alike. The ITV content is fine, but its ITVPlayer UI in the UK is little more than an afterthought compared to other free to air catch up services.

ITV will contribute its more successful archive content to the BBC’s and together they will charge $6.99 per month, after an introductory free trial period, on the web, an Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and Android, with Roku and Chromecast versions due out shortly.

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Apple urged to legalize code injection: Let apps do JavaScript hot-fixes

Faced with an existential threat to its hot patching service, Rollout.io is appealing to Apple to extend its app oversight into post-publication injections of JavaScript code.

CTO and cofounder Eyal Keren has penned an open letter to Apple asking the i-obsessed device maker to develop and deploy a "Live Update Service Certificate" as a way to sign JavaScript code so it can be pushed safely to iOS apps for instant content updates.

Apple already reviews iOS apps destined for its App Store, to make sure they conform with its shifting and sometimes vague rules. In so doing, it manages mostly to limit the presence of malicious apps while also enforcing modest minimum standards for quality.

The review process, however, can take anywhere from a few days to a week or more, which turns out to be inconvenient when app developers want to make immediate changes to their code.

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Apple accused of counter-revolutionary pricing in Russia

Russia's anti-monopoly regulator has taken a bite out of Apple, finding that Cupertino's local outpost fixed iPhone prices in the country.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service's (FAS) investigation found that the company fixed iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 products in the retail supply chain.

Not only does the FAS say Apple set retail prices for 16 retailers in Russia, it followed up with any retailers it thought were flogging phones at “inappropriate” prices.

After a seven-month investigation, the regulator also says it believes Apple had the power to terminate resale agreements if it didn't like the sticker price.

The FAS statement (in Russian here) says it got involved in August 2016, ahead of the October launch of the iPhone 6 in Russia.

“The investigation revealed that from the start of official sales in Russia Apple iPhone 5s models, iPhone 5c, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus,” resellers stuck with Apple's recommended retail prices, and stayed in line for about three months.

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Yahoo Breach Suspects Set to See Indictments by US Justice Department: Report

US authorities are poised to issue criminal indictments targeting four people, three of them in Russia, in connection with epic hacking attacks on Yahoo, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

Bloomberg cited a person briefed on the matter as saying that one person was being tracked down in Canada and the others were in Russia.

Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer lost an annual bonus and the company counsel his job after an investigation showed the company mishandled a 2014 hack that resulted in the theft of personal data from more than 500 million user accounts.

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Xiaomi says it sold 1 million Redmi Note 4 smartphones in 45 days

Xiaomi claims to have sold 1 million units ofRedmi Note 4 in India, in just 45 days. The company says the Redmi Note 4 is the fastest to have hit the 1 million sales mark here. The Redmi Note 4 was launched with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 625 chipset on January 19.

The xiaomi redmi note 4 is available from Flipkart and the Mi Store and Xiaomi earlier claimed to have sold over 2,50,000 units in its first sale. For Xiaomi, the Redmi series has been the best selling smartphone and it shouldn't come as a surprise that the company is selling a lot of Redmi Note 4 units. In a recent interview, Manu Jain, Xiaomi VP and India Managing Director, said that his company plans to sell 7 million units of the Redmi Note 4 in India.

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