Category: Communicate

Communicate covers the issues enterprises face in the selection, implementation, and management of business communication and collaboration technology, software, and services.

EU Proposal for MSS Spectrum Seeks to Balance Bloc’s Commercial and Sovereignty Aspirations

by Ismail Patel, posted in Communicate, Internet of Things, IT Leader, Network
I. Patel

Summary Bullets:

  • The EU’s MSS 2 GHz proposal strengthens regulation, security, and competition, but implementation through 2027–2029 will be phased, not immediate.
  • Small spectrum block sizes favor IoT, messaging, emergency services; large-bandwidth applications face bottlenecks.

When the European Commission unveiled its plan late last month to reassign the 2 GHz mobile satellite service (MSS) spectrum at EU-level, it initiated more than a regulatory proposal. With the dust now settled on the announcement, it is clear that this represents a geopolitical and commercial realignment. Signals in the market suggest the framework is firming up around core principles: sovereignty, security, restricted eligibility, spectrum caps, and wholesale access. But beneath those pillars lies a battlefield of interests that will define not just who wins licenses, but which services Europe values the most – IoT or in-flight broadband, messaging or full-fledged device-to-device (D2D) connectivity.

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UK Plans Teen Social Media Ban, but the Action Raises Questions About Enforceability – and Privacy

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Communicate
Amy Larsen DeCarlo – Principal Analyst, Security and Data Center Services

Summary Bullets

• Following the lead of other nations including Australia, the UK is getting set to restrict access to social media sites for minors 16 years and younger, starting in 2027.

• Comparable rules in other countries have proven to be difficult to execute, with teenagers finding workarounds. However, UK government officials say their efforts will leverage highly effective technology to enforce the ban, including biometric facial age estimation.

When UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans to introduce legislation later this year that will bar teenagers and children from social media access, critics offered immediate comparisons to a similar action by Australia in 2025, which has largely been deemed a failure. Though initially Australia touted the fact that 4.7 million accounts held by children under 16 had lost access to social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat, research shows that just months later, the ban had very little effect. A University of New Castle study of 408 12 to 17 year olds found that due to “limited implementation, incomplete compliance, and substantial circumvention of social media restrictions, the ban has been largely unsuccessful.”

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Google Cloud Highlights the ROI of Agentic Workloads During UK Summit

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Communicate
B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• The Google Cloud UK Summit was held in June 2026, at Tobacco Docks, in London (England). The company will release Gemini 3.5 Pro and Gemini Omni, a multi-modal system, in late-2026.

• Google announced the UK availability of Gemini 3.5 Flash, through the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and the Gemini Enterprise app.

Google Cloud held its UK Summit in London with the strategic intent of demonstrating the ROI of agentic AI. With more than 4,000 participants, it followed the thread commenced in 2025 (please see Google Cloud Focuses on Agentic AI During UK Summit, July 15, 2025), only this time the industry has moved decisively towards the implementation of the technology in practical cases. The company showcased its considerable presence in the UK, with a new data center that will be opening in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, later in 2026 as part of a GBP5-billion investment in AI programs in the country.

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Zoom Enhancements Help Move Work Forward but Fall Short in Other Areas

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
Close-up portrait of a man smiling, wearing glasses and a suit.
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

  • Zoom hopes that this latest round of capabilities will help drive greater platform adoption and distinguish itself from rivals.
  • With respect to achieving those goals, the capabilities deliver Zoom a mixed report card.

Zoom announced a mix of capabilities encompassing mobile access for Zoom My Notes, improved agentic search for Zoom AI Companion and upgrades to Zoom MCP Server. Through the new capabilities, Zoom intends to achieve two implicit goals: to drive platform adoption by adding appealing functionality that aligns with recent market trends and to distinguish itself in a competitively dense field.

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What Was All That Back There, Then? Orange Business Announced 14 Offers at its March Summit

by John Marcus, posted in Big Data, Communicate
A man with dark hair and a slight smile, wearing a black jacket, against a light blue background.
John Marcus – Senior Principal Analyst, Enterprise Mobility and IoT Services

Summary Bullets:

• In March 2026, Orange Business unveiled 14 innovations at its summit, a mix of new products, major upgrades, and strategic repackaging.

• The summit’s offerings position Orange to lead in secure, sovereign enterprise services, driving market differentiation and revenue growth.

Orange Business was not shy about showing its work at its customer summit in Paris this March. The event generated five separate press releases, and included references to “14 breakthrough innovations” in its launch announcement for a collection of “trusted AI, cloud and secure connectivity” offers. If you weren’t paying attention, you may be forgiven for wondering what was all that back there, then?

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RingCentral’s Expanded Partnerships with Cox and Spectrum Position Each for Growth in the Contact Center Space and Beyond

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
Close-up portrait of a smiling man with glasses, wearing a light-colored suit.
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

  • RingCentral has expanded its partnerships with Cox Business and Spectrum Business by augmenting existing unified communications offers with contact center capabilities.
  • Now is an especially opportune time to expand the partnerships as organizations are under more pressure than ever from customers to forge deeper connections.

RingCentral has recently expanded its partnership with two service providers by supplying contact center capabilities for their portfolios. ‘Cox Business Contact Center with RingCentral’ and ‘Unified Customer Experience (UCX) with RingCentral’ from Spectrum Business both leverage RingCentral’s ‘RingCX’ platform, which is AI-driven and omnichannel capable. Both offers complement existing unified communications (UC) offers brought to market in conjunction with RingCentral based on its ‘RingEX’ platform namely, ‘Cox Business Connect with RingCentral’ and from Spectrum Business, ‘Unified Communications (UC) with RingCentral’. Spectrum Business sweetens the deal by blending in a sales-oriented add-on from RingCentral to its UC offer called AI Conversation Expert (ACE), which transcribes and analyzes sales calls and meetings to help close more opportunities.

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RingCentral AIR Pro Is a Meaningful Addition to the Company’s Contact Center Portfolio but Suffers from a Foggy Roadmap

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
Close-up portrait of a man wearing glasses, smiling against a blurred background.
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• RingCentral AIR Pro is the latest member of RingCentral’s agentic AI ecosystem.

• The offer keeps RingCentral neck-and-neck with rivals, but the omission of launch details dilutes its appeal to the market.

Today, organizations are under more pressure than ever from customers to forge deeper connections. To meet that demand, contact centers have been undergoing a profound transformation, with the concept of a ‘contact center’ yielding to the broader concept of ‘customer experience’ (CX). Contact centers are converting from featuring live agents to also including AI agents; from reactive to proactive; from transaction-oriented to relationship-oriented; and from generic to deeply personalized.

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8×8’s New Customer Experience Capabilities are Contemporary but Confusing

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Communicate, IT Leader
A smiling man wearing glasses, with short dark hair, against a blurred background.
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• 8×8’s latest capabilities reflect an ongoing pivot from collaboration occupying its core to customer experience (CX) assuming its central identity.

• While 8×8 is generating market momentum with the new capabilities, the offer structure is confusing.

A few years ago, 8×8 undertook a fundamental pivot, shifting from a company with communication and collaboration at its core to one with CX making up its central identity. Concurrently, 8×8’s ‘XCaaS’ platform – housing an integrated mix of unified communication, customer experience, and CPaaS capabilities – is now known as the 8×8 Platform for CX.

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Zoom’s New Agentic AI Capabilities Fuel a Rejuvenation of Its Platform and the Company

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
Close-up portrait of a smiling man with glasses, wearing a suit.
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

  • Zoom introduced capabilities that reflect a trend of AI moving from use in silos to being leveraged on a far grander scale.
  • In addition, Zoom’s new capabilities extend a dramatic transformation that has been taking place at the company over recent years.

Zoom introduced a wide host of features that meaningfully expand its agentic AI platform. The enhancements span Zoom Workplace, Zoom Phone, and Zoom CX. At the heart lies workflow automation embedded into meetings, calls, chat, and contact center interactions so that conversations trigger action across an enterprise’s systems.

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The Middle East Conflict – The Impact on the ASEAN ICT Market

by Alfie Amir, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, Mobilize, Secure
A smiling man in a suit and tie, with short hair, against a white background.
A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

• Within the ASEAN enterprise ICT market, the conflict has no direct impact, but indirect effects are becoming increasingly apparent due to the higher crude oil prices and rising electricity costs.

• The industry can expect lower ICT spending, higher operational costs for telcos, and slower AI momentum.

The conflict in the Middle East has entered its third week and is expected to continue for several more weeks. Its impact can already be seen globally across multiple sectors, as discussed in detail in GlobalData’s The Middle East Conflict – Executive Briefing, March 10, 2026.

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