Telecom operators have recently made a major push in offering personalized services to their customers, primarily in an effort to retain customers and reduce churn. Customer churn is caused by many factors including bill shock and a lack of customer service satisfaction, two points that Idomoo, a personalized video company, has been trying to address in the telecom industry.

At the time of Russia’s presidential election in March, allegations of election fraud were prevalent across much of the nation, as well as the world.  In an attempt to legitimize the election, the Russian government authorized and provided $500 million for the deployment of about 200,000 cameras in approximately 90,000 polling stations across Russia.

This week at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany, Orga Systems, a provider of real-time billing portfolios, is demonstrating its Energy & Service Billing Platform, which is able to bill energy usage in line with hourly spot market prices and is being shown in a “Wind-to-Home” scenario.

This might not be the year the world ends, as some say the Mayans prophesized, but it may seem like it for a telecommunications industry under pressure to meet booming demand for Internet resources.

By some projections, the explosion in adoption of Internet connected devices such as laptops, tablets, smart phones, blue ray players and Internet TVs could strain network bandwidth beyond capacity as soon as this year, causing cases of services loss as available access to network bandwidth becomes completely consumed by peak demand.

On Monday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, JDSUintroduced PacketPortal, a Smart Network Application Platform that uses microprobe technology to gather intelligence anywhere in the network for use with customer care, marketing and other applications.  These applications provide service providers with a new way to generate revenue, build brands and build subscriber loyalty, says JDSU (Milpitas, Calif., USA).  

This year, London will host the Summer Olympic Games. England last hosted the games in 1948, when mobile phones weren’t even invented. This year, the city and venues must prepare to handle the modern day technological issue of wireless communications. There will be a dramatic influx in mobile data and voice traffic by the spectators who have purchased almost 8 million tickets for the 302 events that will take place in London.

Swedish telecoms gear maker Ericsson is to buy privately-held WiFi technology firm BelAir Networks as part of its plan to boost its mobile broadband offering. Demand for wireless connectivity has boomed in the last couple of years with the proliferation of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

BelAir (Ontario, Canada), which produces indoor and outdoor WiFi systems for telecoms operators that allow people to surf the Internet without a physical coupling to a network, has 120 staff.

On Friday, market research firm Infonetics Research released a new report stating that spending on optical gear grew 8% globally in the fourth quarter of 2011 (4Q11) over the previous quarter.