The decision on AT&T and Time Warner’s $86 billion merger deal will go before the latter’s investors today.
In a note on its website, Time Warner indicated a special meeting of stockholders will be held at 3 p.m. in Atlanta Wednesday. At the meeting, Time Warner stockholders will be asked to “consider and vote on a proposal to adopt the merger agreement.”
If the transaction is ultimately complete – it would have to pass DOJ and other regulatory scrutiny first – Time Warner said shareholders would be entitled to receive for each share of Time Warner common stock $53.75 in cash plus a number of shares of AT&T common stock equal to the exchange ratio set forth in the merger agreement
Time Warner noted, though, the transaction cannot be completed unless Time Warner stockholders holding at least a majority of the shares as of Jan. 3 vote in favor of the merger.
IBM and The Weather Company, an IBM Business, introduced new Mesh Network Alerts technology that provides a mobile method of communicating with underserved populations in developing countries to notify of potential severe weather events or disasters — even in areas with limited internet connection, or cellular networks are disrupted due to an outage.
Developed by IBM researchers, the breakthrough mesh technology will be available soon via The Weather Channel app in emerging markets. The app will use peer-to-peer connections within the mesh network to send alerts to individuals via their smartphone devices.
The peer-to-peer technology converts mobile devices into links within the mesh network, allowing devices to “talk” directly to each other without using cell tower infrastructure. Each smartphone becomes a node that stores the message and passes it to the next nearest device, creating a daisy chain to reach more devices and remove the need for a cellular network. It works off the grid in remote areas, large crowds, or disaster zones, the company said. While other mesh networks use hotspotting, IBM and The Weather Company chose not to turn devices into individual access points to avoid excessive battery drain.
Unlike cellular networks, which can become bogged down by overload in the event of disasters, IBM also noted the mesh network actually improves with more people.
The new Mesh Network Alerts will be available first as an update coming soon to The Weather Channel App for Android devices in emerging markets across Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The app is currently available in the Google Play store.
Altair Semiconductor, a provider of LTE chipsets, has introduced the ALT1250, a new narrowband CAT-M1 and NB1 (NB-IoT) chipset that features global band support, advanced security, and enhanced location capabilities.
Approximately the size of a shirt button and less than 100mm squared in size, the ALT1250 module includes support for both Release 13 standards – CAT-M1 and NB1, as well as a wideband RF front-end supporting unlimited combinations of LTE bands, an integrated GPS receiver, a multi-layered and hardware-based security framework, an internal application MCU subsystem, and packaging that enables standard, low-cost PCB manufacturing.
“With carriers expected to begin operating IoT services on CAT-M1 and NB1 networks by the middle of the year, the new ALT1250 comes at the right time,” Eran Eshed, Altair co-founder and VP of Worldwide Sales and Marketing, said. “It possesses the much anticipated combination of features, power and cost required to support massive rollout of such services. We’ve taken a fresh look at what the market expects from us, and produced the most integrated, feature rich and cost-optimized chipset we’ve ever developed.”
Filed Under: IoT • IIoT • Internet of things • Industry 4.0, Infrastructure