Verizon Beats Korea to the 5G Punch
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| Verizon Beats Korea to the 5G Punch | |
| Number | 802 |
| Broadcast Date | APRIL 3, 2019 |
| Episode Length | 4:46 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
Verizon becomes the first mobile 5G service in the world, WhatsApp adds group chat limits, and the US DoJ warns the Academy about limiting Netflix’s Oscar prospects.
Headlines
- South Korea was set to become the first country to launch commercial 5G mobile service Friday, but Verizon flipped the switch early on its service in Chicago and Minnesota. The Motorola Z3 is the only phone currently available in the US that can take advantage of the service and customers will pay an extra $10 a month to access it. Multiple Carriers will launch in South Korea Friday. SK Telecom expects 1 million 5G customers by the end of the year and KT Corp is offering its 5G plans with unlimited data at a lower price than its LTE plans. The Samsung Galaxy S10 5G can be used on the services there and LG will release its 5G-capable phone in Korea later this month.
- WhatsApp has introduced new settings that give users control over who can add them to group chats without approval. The settings are nobody, which requires you to accept an invitation to be added, My Contacts lets people in your contacts list add you to groups without an invitation and Anyone lets anyone add you to any group without needing your approval first. The new settings start rolling out today and will be worldwide in a few weeks.
- Adobe announced it is bringing content-aware fill to After Effects. Content-aware fill in Photoshop fills in deleted objects in a photo with appropriate pixels based on what's around it. In After Effects it will do the same but with video, powered by Adobe Sensei, its AI platform. To fine tune to results you can create a reference frame in Photoshop.
- The ability for Google Assistant to use Google Duplex to call restaurants to make reservations is rolling out to non-Pixel Android phones and iOS phones. Google Duplex uses text-to-speech and AI to call restaurants for you over the phone. It's been available for Pixel phone users in 43 US States. Android users need Android 5.0 or higher and iOS users need to have Google Assistant installed.
- The US Department of Justice has warned the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that changing its rules to limit the eligibility of Netflix for Oscar awards could diminish sales for the excluded films and potentially violate Section 1 of the Sherman Act that “prohibits anticompetitive agreements among competitors.” Steven Spielberg has been advocating to eliminate movies that premiere on streaming too close to their theatrical premieres. Currently a movie just has to have a theatrical run to qualify.
- Scribd has launched a platform called Scribd Originals with stories available exclusively to Scribd subscribers as ebooks and audiobooks. The first offering is Mueller's War by Garrett Graff, about Robert Mueller's time as a Marine in the Vietnam War. Scribd says the originals will be longer than magazine length but shorter than normal book length. Scribd offers unlimited reading from its library for $8.99 a month which includes ebooks, audio books, graphic novels and the New York Times.
- Sources tell Reuters that Japan Display will supply OLED screens to Apple for its smartwatches, later this year. Japan Display has been late to the OLED market and losing money as LCD screen orders decline. Japan Display gets more than half of its revenue from Apple. Samsung, LG and several Chinese makers dominate the OLED display market. Samsung is the exclusive supplier of OLED screens for phones to Apple while LG supplies OLED screens for watches.
- Toyota announced Wednesday it will offer free access to nearly 24,000 hybrid-vehicle patents until 2030 in order to expand low emission cars. The patents do not include lithium-ion battery technology. Toyota will also supply components including motors, power converters and batteries to competitors. Toyota opened up patents related to its hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in 2015 through 2020.
- T-Mobile’s mobile TV service to include Viacom channels like MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central & more
- T-Mobile announced it has reached an agreement to include Viacom channels in T-Mobile's forthcoming streaming TV service. That includes MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, Comedy Central and more. Viacom has been pulling its channels from services like PS Vue and recent reached an agreement to keep its channels on AT&T's DirecTV and DirecTV Now services. T-Mobile bought Layer3 last year in order to power a streaming TV service that it says it plans to launch by the end of the year.
Links
| Preceded by: "BMW and Microsoft Announce Open Manufacturing Platform" |
Verizon Beats Korea to the 5G Punch |
Followed by: "Apple Cuts HomePod Price" |