We watched a short video clip demonstrating how to set up Alexa with the latest version of the digital assistant. The video also demonstrated how Alexa would only recognize the account owner’s voice and rejected others. However it also showed how it could be foiled by a recording of the owner’s voice. Since Amazon is also considering developing a finance capacity similar to PayPal using Alexa, further enhancement of the security will be needed.
We also followed up on the 5G mobile demonstration by Telstra at the Gold Coast during the Commonwealth Games using some cutting edge technology. We noted the evolution of Telstra from a telephone company to a data services company which will involve the “shuttering” of 2500 local telephone exchanges and converting the remainder to distributed data centres. There will also be additional data centres located between the major data centres and the local facilities. This is needed for edge computing vis a vis cloud computing where fast acting low latence transmission is required for the IOT. Fifty percent of mobile traffic is still expected to go over the 4G network.
Les Rodgers