Bulgaria's Vivacom is introducing voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) and WiFi calling services with the help of Ericsson's Fast VoLTE Launch offering, a bundle of products including virtual its Mobile Telephony Application Server (vMTAS), virtual Session Border Controller (vSBC), virtual Call Session Control Function (vCSCF), virtual Media Resource Function (vMRF) and virtual IPWorks. The move builds on an existing relationship between the two companies, which has seen Vivacom using Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) 's Evolved Packet Core network.

Telefónica 's Aura, a digital assistant it initially launched in February as its response to Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa, has picked up more than 470,000 users in the three months since its integration into the operator's Movistar TV app, El Boletin reports. Aura, which Telefónica bills as being powered by "cognitive intelligence," allows Movistar users to perform voice-activated searches for content on a range of criteria, such as title, genre or director, among other tasks. (See Telefónica's Answer to Apple's Siri: Aura and Telefónica Takes Aura AI Tool Into 6 Markets.)

The number of Brits watching videos on demand from commercial services has soared over the last couple from years, up from 29% of adults in 2016 to 46% in 2018. That's one of the findings from the latest Internet access – households and individuals, Great Britain report, published by the Office for National Statistics. Surprisingly, perhaps, email remains the most popular activity on the Internet, with 84% of adults still @ it. See the full report for more details and a ton of graphs.{image 1}

— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading