Telenor Joins forces with Oracle to manage revenues in key Asian territories

Oracle Communications' cloud-native converged charging, and billing solutions is now focusing on its Asia market.  As a result, the company is partnering with Telenor to support the telecommunications provider's mobile and next-generation 5G services across Asia.  Mobile services, from voice to video streaming, are on the rise across Asia. To support this purpose, Telenor has selected Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management that lays the groundwork for 5G and provides charging and billing interactions for 175 million subscribers in Asia.

Oracle is aiming to offer a range of products, from an ongoing monthly subscription to a video-on-demand service to mobile banking payments to large-scale prepaid voice and data services. These services and solutions will be deployed in countries like Malaysia, Thailand, and Pakistan. Oracle's fully integrated, cloud-native digital billing and charging solution gives Telenor proven monetization and real-time rating capabilities.

Oracle's cloud-native converged charging solution has been validated in performance testing on its Cloud Infrastructure. The company says that it scales to high subscriber volumes with low millisecond latency, near-linear scalability, and efficient resource utilization, including prepaid and postpaid charging scenarios, without needing to manage the risk of out-of-sync revenue systems.

 

Quaybridge has formed an alliance with bp to advance the company’s global offshore wind portfolio

Quaybridge, a popular name in the UK energy segment, has recently made an announcement that it is partnering with bp. Both the companies are expected to work cordially to improve bp's global offshore wind portfolio, and they also want to scale bp's offshore wind knowledge. The new agreement will allow team members from Quaybridge to work closely with bp's renewables business development team. From bp's SVP renewables growth, David Anderson has stated that it is crucial to invest in the right skill because it plays a major role in a business's success.

He furthermore added that Quaybridge is well known in the industry for its entrepreneurial spirit and technical expertise. The new partnership is expected to play a major role in giving the companies an edge in this highly competitive segment as they are looking forward to accelerating their global portfolio. Everoze was responsible for forming Quaybridge in 2018, and it was able to accumulate the necessary expertise. Quaybridge services are aimed at the global level, where companies from various regions can make use of their services. Colin Morgan, team director at Quaybridge, has stated that the company is very excited to support bp in its effort, and the whole team will work diligently to deliver success.

 

Coca-Cola’s sees a Spike in Its Q2 Growth in Sparkling Soft Drinks

Beverage giant Coca-Cola Co. has raised its outlook for the year, as rising Covid-19 vaccination rates have paved the way for reopening restaurants, stadiums, and movie theaters, which in turn boosts the sales of soft drinks around the globe. Coca-Cola's sales plummeted in 2020 when dining and entertainment venues were closed due to a pandemic. The company's revenue recently soared above levels from year earlier and topped revenue in the same period in 2019.

The company's net revenue for the quarter was $10.1 billion; it saw a sharp rise from a year ago and up slightly from $10 billion in the same period in 2019. Coke now expects organic revenue growth of 12 to 14 percent in 2021.  It projects per-share earnings will grow between 13and 15 percent this year, a growth rate between high single digits and low double digits.

The company remains very clear-eyed about the potential spikes in some markets due to the new strain of the virus—Delta variant, but overall it sees for a return to normalcy. The company's executives stated that while consumption in the US has rebounded, but the country isn't yet past the pandemic. Therefore Coca-Cola is trying to boost manufacturing and production as early as possible.

 

Byju’s Eyes US Expansion with $500 million Epic Acquisition

Indian edtech startup Byju’s has announced the acquisition of the US-based reading platform Epic. The latter is a popular digital reading platform for kids under-12. The cost the acquisition is $500 million. This acquisition is being seen as a move by Byju’s to expand in the US.

This move by Byju’s is part of its plans of developing in North America where it plans to invest $1 billion. Acquisition of Epic is a good move by Byju’s. Epic’s global user base has 2 million teachers and 50 million kids. The reading platform is designed incredibly. It allows kids to personalize reading themselves.

Epic has so far raised $51 million in funding to date and has 150 employees on its payroll. The company’s CEO Suren Markosian and co-founder Kevin Donahue will remain in their roles at Epic post the acquisition.

Prior to this acquisition, Byju’s has made some other big investments recently, including a $300 million acquisition of White Hat Jr and Aakash Educational Services for almost a billion dollars. The Epic acquisition will further expand its products portfolio and bring fresh expertise onboard to expand in North America.

 

LIC launches new benefit-based health insurance plan, Arogya Rakshak

The Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India recently has launched a new health insurance plan—Arogya Rakshak, a non-linked, non-participating, regular premium, individual health insurance plan. This plan primarily aims at providing timely support to the insurance holders in case of medical emergencies and helping their families to remain financially independent in challenging times.

This plan is different from the conventional health insurance plan in terms of the method of payment. While the latter reimburses the actual cost that has been incurred on treatment, Arogya Rakshak provides fixed benefit health insurance cover. This plan pays a lump sum benefit irrespective of actual medical expenses. Besides, this plan is not comprehensive as it works only against certain specified health risks.

One can purchase the plan for them as well as for their family members. It is available for Principal Insured/spouse/parents aged 18 to 65 years and children of age 91 days to 20 years. The cover period for principal insured, spouse, and parents will be available up to 80 years, while in the case of children, it is available only till the age of 25 years. This policy increases the overall health cover with time automatically through the Auto Step-up benefit.

 

United States Tops the Global Petroleum and Natural Gas Production in 2020

Recent statistics and reports have stated that more petroleum and natural gas were produced in the United States than in any other country during 2020. The US petroleum and natural gas output in 2020 totaled 66.9 quadrillion British thermal units (quads), whereas Russia produced 45.5 quads and Saudi Arabia produced 26.5 quads of petroleum and natural gas in 2020.

Petroleum and natural gas production fell in all three countries in 2020 due to pandemic and there was a consequent crude oil price declines, particularly in the first quarter of 2020. Saudi Arabia and Russia reduced their crude oil production as part of an OPEC+ agreement. Still, in the United States, reduced production resulted in the drop in oil price and tight oil investments, and, to a lesser extent, unplanned outages.

Petroleum production includes various liquid fuels, including crude oil and lease condensate, natural gas plant liquids (NGPL), and bitumen. The US petroleum production decreased from 31.8 quads in 2019 to 30.4 quads in 2020. But, NGPL production in 2020 grew by 0.4 quads, boosted by an increase in domestic ethane consumption and ethane exports. This resulted in the production of more crude oil and natural gas in the US.

 

Telangana State and Microsoft are in the final leg of discussion for setting up a new data center

Tech giant Microsoft is all set to open a data center in Telangana state, India. The talks for the same are in the final leg, and the company is expected to invest almost Rs 15,000 crore. Microsoft has also chosen the land where this new data center would be constructed. The new effort is a part of the company’s attempt to develop such facilities in India under the name of BAM Digital reality. It is a well-known fact that the Telangana State is receiving investments from major corporations and growing unprecedently in the IT space.

Microsoft is looking forward to setting up a data center in Telangana, and the announcement for the same is expected shortly from the company. It must also be noted that back in 2019, Reliance Jio and Microsoft had struck a long-term deal to establish several cloud data centers in India. As part of the deal, the tech giant was supposed to bring in its cloud computing services to Jio’s network and target the SMEs keen on moving their business practices to cloud technology infrastructure. Apart from Microsoft, other major tech names like Amazon Web Services and Google are working tirelessly to strengthen their presence in the Indian data segment.