5G underway

Thursday, 05 May 2022

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Good morning!

There is good reason for members of the Nigerian tech industry to throw their hands in the air in jubilation. Though the journey has been slow and at times tedious, 5G is underway.

In a press statement sent out Wednesday, NCC reveals that letters of licence for the 5G network have been handed over to MTN and Mafab Communications. NCC said we should be expecting 5G in the country by August.

Below are the tech stories and news you need to know to start your day, carefully curated by Technext.

Summary of the news

NCC said that the 5G service will be available in Nigeria by August 24, as it issued letters of licence to MTN and Mafab Communications
Apple has filed a lawsuit against Rivos, claiming that the startup hired employees to steal its chip secrets
A new report by the Wall Street Journal details Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter, which includes taking the platform public 3 years after the buyout
LinkedIn has agreed to pay $1.8 million to women over discrimination claims

NCC says 5G service will be available in Nigeria by August 24, issues letters of licence to MTN, Mafab

After almost five months of internal deliberations and ceremonial events, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has finally issued letters of 5G licence awards to MTN and Mafab Communications, who won the 3.5GHz spectrum auction conducted by the Commission in December last year, Technext reports.

In a press statement to Technext, Dr Ikechukwu Adinde, the Director of Public Affairs for NCC said that the Management of the Commission led by its Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta made this known to the Board of Commissioners at the Board’s Special Meeting, held Wednesday.

“With the issuance of the final letters of awards of 5G spectrum and in line with the Auction’s Information Memorandum (IM), the two licensees are now expected to accelerate deployment of 5G network that will usher Nigeria into a more robust Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and a more digitised Nigerian economy,” the statement reads in part.

Apple claims startup hired employees to steal chip secrets

Apple has sued a startup for allegedly stealing trade secrets to build a competing chip lineup, The Verge reports. The company filed a lawsuit late last week in California, naming the Santa Clara-based Rivos as well as two former Apple employees, Bhasi Kaithamana and Ricky Wen. It claims the company mounted a “coordinated campaign” to attract Apple employees and encourage them to copy confidential documents before leaving, violating their contract with Apple.

The case pits one of the biggest tech companies against a much newer rival, which Apple claims gained an unfair advantage by poaching dozens of its employees to get access to internal files.

Rivos was founded in May 2021 and has operated for months in stealth mode, hiring employees from several major tech companies. Apple says that included more than 40 of its engineers, many of whom were familiar with Apple’s system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs. But in addition to simply having general knowledge of SoCs like the M1 and A15, the suit alleges Rivos encouraged employees to copy troves of work-related documents before leaving.

“Rivos began a coordinated campaign to target Apple employees with access to Apple proprietary and trade secret information about Apple’s SoC designs,” it claims, hoping to gain an unfair advantage. Rivos didn’t reply to a request for comment on the suit.

Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter includes taking the platform public 3 years after buyout

Elon Musk, who has agreed to take Twitter Inc. private in a $44 billion deal, has told potential investors he could return the social-media company to public ownership after just a few years, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Musk said he plans to stage an initial public offering of Twitter in as little as three years of buying it, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal is expected to close later this year, subject to conditions including the approval of Twitter shareholders and regulators, the company has said.

Twitter’s board has agreed to an offer from Musk of $54.20 a share to take the company private.

While private-equity firms often spend about five years restructuring a company before taking it public once more, Musk’s tentative three-year timeframe could signal he believes he can rapidly reform Twitter to improve its profitability, the Wall Street Journal said.

LinkedIn agrees to pay $1.8 million to women over discrimination claims

LinkedIn, the professional networking platform, has reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Labor to pay $1.8 million to female employees who the agency said received far less compensation than their male colleagues from 2015 to 2017, the department said on Tuesday, the New York Times reports.

According to a statement released by the agency, LinkedIn denied 686 women equal pay at its San Francisco office and at its headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. The women worked in engineering, marketing and product roles.

During a routine evaluation, the agency found that the women in question had been paid “at a statistically significant lower rate” than their male counterparts even after taking into account “legitimate explanatory factors,” according to the conciliation agreement between LinkedIn and the Labor Department.