"SingTel, Amdocs launch Israeli development center, will focus on voice and ? recognition."
Options
cobbland
Members Posts: 3,768 ✭✭✭✭✭
SingTel, Amdocs launch Israeli development center, will initially focus on voice and ? recognition
By Adam Vrankulj
March 4, 2013 -
SingTel, along with customer experience systems and services provider Amdocs has launched a development center in Israel, called L!feLabs, through which the telecom will invest in Israeli startups, fund academic and commercial research, and collaborate with incubators and angel investors.
According to the company, it will be focusing primarily on voice and ? recognition, as well as technologies mobile and wireless infrastructure.
The idea behind the center in Israel is to bring promising technology from Israel to Asia, as well to increase its investments in research and development. This is also a part of its recently established global innovation initiative, L!feLabs, to “inspire and enable ideas to become reality.”
“As we move SingTel beyond just communications into becoming a multimedia digital provider, innovation is key to our transformation. Never before have we seen technology and business models changing so rapidly. To stay ahead of the market and anticipate customer needs, we have significantly expanded our investments in digital services that will help our customers discover new services, be informed, entertained or more productive,” Allen Lew, Chief Executive Officer of Group Digital L!fe, SingTel said.
“Through this partnership with Amdocs and SingTel L!feLabs @ Israel, we are embedding ourselves in one of the leading innovation hubs of the world. We are committed to engaging the local innovation community. Our financial investment in Israel will be determined according to the value of projects. In SingTel, we have a corporate venture fund of S$200 million. Part of this fund will also reach Israel.”
The center, as a co-investment between SingTel and Amdocs will be hosted on Amdoc’s Ra’anana campus. This co-investment is the first collaboration in Israel by a service provider from Asia Pacific, and is seen as a gateway for local Israeli startups into the fastest growing region in the world: Asia.
Some notable Israeli biometrics companies have recently been bought by major investors and players in the biometrics space.
Israel-based ? recognition platform provider Face.com was scooped up last year by Facebook, and rumours suggested the price tag on that deal could have been as much as $100 million.Face.com is a Tel Aviv-based technology company that has developed a platform for efficient and accurate ? recognition in photos uploaded via Web and mobile applications.
Face.com applications and API services scan billions of photographs monthly and tag faces in those photos, tying them directly to available social networking information.
Also last year, Intel bought Israeli heartbeat biometrics technology firm, IDesia Biometrics.http://www.biometricupdate.com/201303/singtel-amdocs-launch-israeli-development-center-will-initially-focus-on-voice-and-? -recognition/The story in Globes notes that IDesia “develops heart-based biometric technology that allows personal computers, mobile phones and gadgets to personally recognize heartbeats.”
Dr. Daniel Lange, one of the founders of IDesia, said that: “identification on the basis of heartbeat is not a biometric measurement recognized by any government body.”
The firm’s heartbeat-based biometric technology uses an electrical signal generated by the heartbeat to create an “electro biodynamic signature” that is unique to every individual. To recognize heartbeats, all it takes is a contact between the finger of the person being checked and a small metal sensor. The technology can be used in airports and border crossings, as well as electronic devices such as personal computers, mobile phones and gadgets.
Comments
-
Carl Cameron Investigates Part 2 - Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.?
Thursday, December 13, 2001
Part 2 of 4
BRIT HUME, HOST: Last time we reported on the approximately 60 Israelis who had been detained in connection with the Sept. 11 terrorism investigation. Carl Cameron reported that U.S. investigators suspect that some of these Israelis were spying on Arabs in this country, and may have turned up information on the planned terrorist attacks back in September that was not passed on.
Tonight, in the second of four reports on spying by Israelis in the U.S., we learn about an Israeli-based private communications company, for whom a half-dozen of those 60 detained suspects worked. American investigators fear information generated by this firm may have fallen into the wrong hands and had the effect of impeded the Sept. 11 terror inquiry. Here's Carl Cameron's second report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fox News has learned that some American terrorist investigators fear certain suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks may have managed to stay ahead of them, by knowing who and when investigators are calling on the telephone. How?
By obtaining and analyzing data that's generated every time someone in the U.S. makes a call.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What city and state, please?
CAMERON: Here's how the system works. Most directory assistance calls, and virtually all call records and billing in the U.S. are done for the phone companies by Amdocs Ltd., an Israeli-based private elecommunications company.
Amdocs has contracts with the 25 biggest phone companies in America, and more worldwide. The White House and other secure government phone lines are protected, but it is virtually impossible to make a call on normal phones without generating an Amdocs record of it.
In recent years, the FBI and other government agencies have investigated Amdocs more than once. The firm has repeatedly and adamantly denied any security breaches or wrongdoing. But sources tell Fox News that in 1999, the super secret national security agency, headquartered in northern Maryland, issued what's called a Top Secret sensitive compartmentalized information report, TS/SCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands – in Israel, in particular.
Investigators don't believe calls are being listened to, but the data about who is calling whom and when is plenty valuable in itself. An internal Amdocs memo to senior company executives suggests just how Amdocs generated call records could be used. “Widespread data mining techniques and algorithms.... combining both the properties of the customer (e.g., credit rating) and properties of the specific ‘behavior….’” Specific behavior, such as who the customers are calling.
The Amdocs memo says the system should be used to prevent phone fraud. But U.S. counterintelligence analysts say it could also be used to spy through the phone system. Fox News has learned that the N.S.A has held numerous classified conferences to warn the F.B.I. and C.I.A. how Amdocs records could be used. At one NSA briefing, a diagram by the Argon national lab was used to show that if the phone records are not secure, major security breaches are possible.
Another briefing document said, "It has become increasingly apparent that systems and networks are vulnerable.…Such crimes always involve unauthorized persons, or persons who exceed their authorization...citing on exploitable vulnerabilities."
Those vulnerabilities are growing, because according to another briefing, the U.S. relies too much on foreign companies like Amdocs for high-tech equipment and software. "Many factors have led to increased dependence on code developed overseas.... We buy rather than train or develop solutions."
U.S. intelligence does not believe the Israeli government is involved in a misuse of information, and Amdocs insists that its data is secure. What U.S. government officials are worried about, however, is the possibility that Amdocs data could get into the wrong hands, particularly organized crime. And that would not be the first thing that such a thing has happened. Fox News has documents of a 1997 drug trafficking case in Los Angeles, in which telephone information, the type that Amdocs collects, was used to "completely compromise the communications of the FBI, the Secret Service, the DEO and the LAPD."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7544.htmService providers around the globe rely on Amdocs
Customer Management
AAA Mid-Atlantic
A1 Telekom Austria
BendBroadband
BT
Claro Brazil
Claro Chile
Eircom
Elisa
Enel
FamilySearch
Jupiter Telecommunication (J:COM)
LuxGSM
MobilTel
ONO
Reliance Communications (RCOM)
Rogers Communications
RomTelecom
Sprint
Telindus Belgacom ICT
Telkom SA
TELUS
U.S. Cellular
VimpelCom
Yorkshire Water
Revenue Management
AAPT
America Movil
AT&T Mobility
A1 Telekom Austria
BendBroadband
BT
Cable Bahamas
Claro Brazil
Claro Chile
Comcast
JSC Kazakhtelecom
Jupiter Telecommunication (J:COM)
LuxGSM
Mobilicity
Movilnet
Partner Communications
RomTelecom
Rogers Communications
Rostelecom
Sensis
Sprint
T-Mobile Czech Republic
T-Mobile UK
Telefónica Czech Republic
Telefónica O2 Slovakia
Telenor Hungary
Telkom SA
TELUS
Vietnam Telecom National Co.
VimpelCom
XL Axiata
Zon Multimedia
OSS (Operations Support Systems)
Anonymous - Leading European Service Provider
Anonymous - Leading South American Service Provider
3
Alestra
Cable&Wireless Worldwide
Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE)
CenturyLink
Claro Chile
CNT
Defense Telematica Organization
Elion
FASTWEB
GET
HSBC Bank
ICE
Interoute Telecommunications Ltd
KPN
Kyivstar
LuxGSM
NetCom
ONO
Optimus
Rostelecom
Slovak Telekom
OSS (cont'd)
Sunrise
Tata Communications
Tele2 Communications
Telefonica de Espana
Telenor Serbia
Telenor Sweden
TeliaSonera
Telstra
Time dotCom Bhd
TIM Brasil
T-Mobile Czech Republic
? Media
Vodafone Germany
Ziggo
Services
AT&T Services
Belgacom
BendBroadband
Cellcom Israel
Christie Digital
DIRECTV
Dish Network
MetroPCS
MobilTel Bulgaria
Openreach
R.H. Donnelley
Sensis
SingTel Optus
Sprint
T-Mobile Czech Republic
T-Mobile UK
Telindus Belgacom ICT
Telkom SA
VimpelCom
Compact Convergence
Applifone (Star-Cell)
Bakcell
Bezeq
Cellcom Africa
Eagle Mobile
Effortel SA
Movicel
Pelephone
PrimeTel
Transatel
Interactive
Hong Kong CSL
T-Mobile Austria
T-Mobile International AG
Telenet
Telstra
Vodafone Global
Vodafone UK
Portfolio Enablers
A1 Telekom Austria
Globe Telecom
Vodafone Netherlands
T-Mobile UK
Advertising & Media
Anuncios en Directorios (ADSA)
Eniro
Fiserv
R.H. Donnelley
Sensis
Truvo
Trudon Ltd
Yell Publicidad
BSS (Business Support Systems)
LuxGSM
Melita
Telefónica Argentina
Partner Management
Rostelecom
Amdocs Consulting
Rostelecom
EPC
Claro Chile
CES 8 (Customer Support Systems)
U.S. Cellular
Amdocs eXpress Portal
SingTel Optus
@2013 Amdocs Inc.
http://www.amdocs.com/About/Success/Pages/customer-success.aspx#company