Opinion feature by Dr. Winnie Tang, Honorary Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Hong Kong:

Acquiring foreign talent is proved to be a shortcut to promote social and economic development of a place. The United States being well known as the melting pot of various nationalities is a typical example in this respect.

More than 30 percent of Europe's mobile connections will be running on 5G networks by 2025, according to a new GSMA study. The 2017 Europe edition of the GSMA's Mobile Economy series, forecasts that there will be 214 million 5G connections in Europe by 2025, establishing the region as one of the largest 5G markets in the world by that point.

On Wednesday, Airbus and Paris underground operator RATP announced that they will carry out a study to determine the feasibility of adding flying vehicles to Paris’ transport network.

Asfinag, Austria’s public roads operator, has formed a partnership with Siemens Mobility to provide an intelligent traffic management system in an effort to make the roads safer. 

BMW has revealed that it is considering manufacturing its new electric Mini vehicle outside of the UK due to the uncertainty following the country's decision to exit the EU. A source close to the car manufacturing giant claims that BMW executives will make a decision on the location for the manufacturing of its new electric model by the end of September.

Experts have suggested that Canada looks set to join the US, Europe and Japan in the race to develop, deliver and deploy driverless technology. The claim was made following the announcement by Canadian automotive parts firm Magna International that they have developed its own autonomous technology.

China is leading the global race in the development of smart cities with the world’s second-largest economy now having over 500 smart city projects either ready or under construction.

The deployment of 'smart lampposts' could potentially save Europe €2.1bn every year according to analysis which was conducted by Sharing Cities, a Europe-wide Smart Cities organization. The comprehensive report highlights that currently Europe spends around $3bn on street lighting on an annual basis.

According to a new report from the IoT analyst firm Berg Insight, yearly shipments of smart energy meters in Europe will reach a record level of 31.3 million units in 2018. Smart electricity meter shipments grew 16% compared to the previous year to 22.2 million units. At the same time, smart gas meter shipments increased 9% to 9.1 million units. Growth in both segments will be sustained into 2019 and 2020, driven by ongoing large-scale rollouts in multiple countries.

Germany's Deutsche Telekom has defended its record on expanding broadband services, after the country's digital focus became a hot topic leading up to the federal election campaign. Deutsche Telekom has focused on upgrading its copper network with new VDSL techniques, and some have criticized the company for not investing more in full fiber networks (FTTH).

Spain could increase its GDP by $48.5 billion, an additional 3.6 percent, by 2021, according to a report by Mobile World Capital Barcelona and Accenture Strategy called 'Opportunity of the Digital Economy in Spain: How digitalization can speed up the Spanish economy'.

For many years now, there has been a great deal of speculation surrounding the benefits of 5G and how it could unlock a world of unprecedented opportunities. 5G boasts ultra-low latency, super-fast speeds and high throughput ensuring a variety of real-time services, applications and solutions which could be applicable to virtually any industry. 

Acquisition extends the Entrust Datacard portfolio to include general purpose hardware security module offering that provides enhanced cloud, data security, compliance and payments capabilities.

A consortium of businesses led by Ericsson have been tasked with the responsibility of leading an innovative 5G CAR project - with the primary aim to develop an overall 5G system architecture that provides optimized end-to-end vehicle-to-everything (V2X) network connectivity for highly reliable and low-latency V2X services.

In order to help tackle the serious threats posed to network security, ETSI, officially recognized by the European Union as a European Standards Organization, will stage a comprehensive week-long event devoted to this increasingly crucial subject.

The European Commission has launched a public consultation on how Europe should promote digital innovation in health and care, for the benefits of citizens and health systems in Europe.

The European Union’s (EU) Horizon Europe program has launched the Sustainable Multi-functional and Recyclable Heat Pumps (SMART-PUMPS) project, delivering innovative, energy-saving, and highly efficient heat pumps (HPs) for residential buildings across Europe.

The European Commission recently unveiled plans to invest jointly with the EU Member States in building a world-class European supercomputers infrastructure. Supercomputers are needed to process ever larger amounts of data and bring benefits to the society in many areas from health care and renewable energy to car safety and cybersecurity.

The European Network for Cyber Security (ENCS) and the European Distribution System Operators’ Association (E.DSO) have released some baseline cyber security requirements for smart meters and data concentrators.

In the era of Industry 4.0, smart cities are characterized by advanced, next-generation technologies which are incorporated into a given city or area’s infrastructure to better the lives of the respective city’s citizens. Through the wider adoption of emerging technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), big data analytics, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Augmented/Virtual reality (AR/VR), among others, smart cities are no longer a thing of the future.