Category Archives: Technology

STEM Jobs: What’s New in LA

Technology

Technology hubs throughout the West Coast are in the lead nationwide with job opportunities in the STEM industry.  With an 8.2 percent increase in LA between 2014 and 2018, this makes it the city that has encountered the fastest growth in this industry.

STEM preparation is starting young in California, and in some places is focusing on women.  A new mobile STEM center has been rolled out by the Girl Scouts Heart of Central California (GSHCC) in an attempt to involve those Girl Scouts living in urban and rural areas who are not able to get to Sacramento and Modesto STEM centers. GSHCC is available to 17,500 members and over 9,000 volunteers in 18 Northern Californian counties. The idea is, according to manager of the STEM initiative Girl Scouts, Beth Peters, to “serve all the girls in our 18 counties.”

5G Technology Enhancing Local Services

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Ted Ross, Chief Information Officer for LA has claimed that in the future, with the assistance of 5G technology, cities will have the capacity to provide much better public safety and trash collection services.  Ross believes that this technology enables “more livable, equitable and sustainable living.”

He said:

“5G allows us an ultra-high speed connectivity that not only gives us better information of what our communities need when they ask for it, but also gives it the ability to deploy in a very efficient way. By proactively knowing when there’s an issue in the city, whether it’s a situation that needs police, or a situation that needs a pothole filled, it allows us to proactively respond and deliver it without a citizen never having to ask for it.”

It looks like this will be happening earlier rather than later.  Verizon recently announced that with the collaboration of Motorola, Qualcomm and Samsung, it was able to connect a smartphone to its 5G network. A trial was conducted using a Motorola Moto Z3 using a 5G moto mod, Verizon’s 28GHz millimetre-wave (mmWave) spectrum, Samsung’s 5G New Radio (NR) solutions, a Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 5G modem, and Qualcomm’s QTM052 mmWave antenna modules.  According to Bill Stone, VP of Technology and Planning at Verizon, the test – which was successful – expands its lead on 5G, and as such, they will be “the first to offer a 5G-upgradeable smartphone on [its] network in 2019.”

 

Verizon 5G

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Verizon has announced that LA is the second US city it is choosing for its 5G services.  According to Lowell McAdam, CEO of Verizon, the company purchased:

“36 million miles of fiber [providing for the capacity of] big pipes [to] feed the cells. [They] will have hundreds of megahertz of bandwidth to deliver the whole suite of services of 5G [and] 1,000 cell sites up and operating on th    e global standard.”

As such, LA will be subject to fixed wireless 5G which means that consumers will get broadband service via wireless equipment on a tower/cell site, using customer premise equipment. millimeter wave spectrum bands will be used.  Through its research, the company has found that transmissions in higher brands are able to pass through foliage.  In addition, transmitters and receivers will be placed 2,000 feet apart.

LA: Virtual Reality Arcades

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OctulusSix Virtual Reality Arcades are to open in various malls and multiplexes in the LA region.  This global venture is being developed between LA’s Imax Corp., and Stockholm’s Starbreeze.  The combination renders the possibility of the use of the Google VR camera (created by Imax) with a collection of VR entertainment and games (from Starbreeze).  In the future it is hoped that the establishment of virtual reality production partnerships will occur.

Last month, Jacob Kastrenakes reported in The Verge, that the collaboration between Starbreeze and Acer was undertaken in order to “develop a high-end virtual reality headset designed for arcades and theme parks.”  Over the last year, Starbreeze started showcasing the StarVR (the headset) but in the near future, it will be further developed.  The main attractive feature of StarVR is its wide field of vision, which allegedly can realistically copy what one sees in real life, right down to the peripheral vision.

It seems the VR world is becoming attractive to a lot of large technological corporations, including Google which is planning to use its Daydream system which intends to pose a challenge to the lead Oculus (owned by Facebook) currently has in the fabrication of artificial worlds.

 

Alphabet Inc. Expands to LA

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los-angelesAlphabet Inc. (the parent company of Google created a few months ago) just announced that it hopes to expand its network Google Fiber to Los Angeles. It is currently undergoing discussions with city officials in an effort to better understand the needs of LA along with matters that might impact construction, like infrastructure and topography.

This matter is quite newsworthy given that since the company’s inception back in October of this year, it has avoided expanding Google Fiber to larger cities. Rather, it has focused more on less competitive secondary markets like Salt Lake City. Now though, it looks like the company is changing directions and strategy as it broke ground on a high speed Internet project in Atlanta in the summer. Los Angeles and Chicago look like the next destinations.

With this, comes expansion plans in LA from AT&T Inc., for its high speed Internet in the region.