5G vs. Airlines ... China's Robotics ambition ... Salman Khan?

Greetings for the New Year 2022.

2021 was truly annus horribilis for the entire world. Despite taking extreme precautions, my family and I were unlucky to have contracted COVID. We managed to get through, but some in my closed and extended circle did not. But I am grateful that I am able to greet you here.

Wish you and your family members an Annus Mirabilis 2022. Hope the new year will be a remarkable year as it sounds.

Some bits,

• Apple has become the first US company to achieve a market cap of $3 trillion. It is more likely to completely ditch

• On Christmas day, European bank Santander remitted by mistake an approximate 130 million pounds to around 75,000 customers. What makes the recovery difficult is that many of the ‘benefactors’ customer accounts are with rival banks.

• China wants to be the world’s robotics hub by 2025. To achieve this the Chinese government has released a 5 year roadmap to achieve this and plans to invest in advancements of servomotors and control panels. The current robotics manufacturing density is 246 per 10,000 people and the country wants to double this by 2025.

• China’s Xi’an province is in a lockdown due to COVID surge. Why is this province important? Because, this is home to chip manufacturing facilities of Samsung and Micron. And both these companies have to reduce the outputs from these facilities and re-adjust their supply chains.

• Microsoft’s Y2K22 Bug. Microsoft Exchange admins recently found out that emails were not being delivered on Jan 1, 2022. It was because one of the variables in the application was not able to store a date greater than Jan 1, 2022. Microsoft has released a temporary patch since then.

And, Finally…

• Salman Khan has entered the NFT bandwagon. He has partnered with BollyCoin, a marketplace for Bollywood specific tokens, to introduce his own NFT collection.

---

5G rollout vs Airlines.

AT&T & Verizon will start from 5-Jan to out 5G services near airports, thereby refusing a request by FAA and airlines to delay the launch. The airlines industry have been arguing for a long time that the airwaves in which the 5G signals operate interfere with altitude sensing altimeters, and that there they can send confusing signals while landing of aircrafts.

Why is the wireless industry not delaying the 5G launch?

First, the wireless industry has paid nearly $80 billion to operate 5G in the frequency and the competition is intense to rollout faster mobile broadband. Since the metropolitan areas near the airports have the maximum population, any delay in rolling out 5G is not good economics.

The industry also argues that the gap bewteen the frequencies is high and there can be no interference. The stakes are really high.

---

If you like this newsletter, please feel free to share it or subscribe it. Till the next edition Stay Safe, Stay Healthy

Best

-Senthil