1. AT&T has signed a long-term content deal with Viacom. The new contract brings together AT&T’s U-Verse and DirecTV networks, which previously had separate contracts with Viacom. The company says the combined properties make it the largest pay TV provider in the world.
Viacom owns Paramount Pictures, Comedy Central, MTV, VH-1 and Nickelodeon. The next move for AT&T could be bringing that content to mobile devices. Just last week, Verizon launched its mobile video service, Go90, which is already ahead of Comcast’s XFINITY TV Go and HBO NOW in Apple’s U.S. app store.
2. Researchers at Palo Alto Networks have identified a new virus that can infect iPhones whether or not they are jailbroken. They have christened the new virus YiSpecter. According to the security researchers, YiSpecter can download, install and launch arbitrary iOS apps, replace existing apps with those it downloads, hijack other apps’ execution to display advertisements, change Safari’s default search engine, bookmarks and opened pages, and upload device information to the C2 server. So far, most reported infections have happened in China and Taiwan.
3. HP is teaming up with Intel, Broadcom and VMWare to launch an open network operating system for data centers. OpenSwitch says it will support both traditional and cloud networking environments. The goal is to separate switching software from hardware. HP is one of the leading vendors of the “off-the-shelf” hardware used by operators who are starting to virtualize some network functions.
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4. Jack Dorsey is returning to run the company he helped start ten years ago. Dorsey is now CEO of Twitter, for the second time, as well as CEO of mobile payments company Square. At Twitter Dorsey succeeds Dick Costolo, who stepped down earlier this year.
5. Alphabet is real today. If you owned shares of Google when the market closed on Friday you now own Class C shares of Alphabet, which replaces Google today on the NASDAQ exchange. The ticker symbol remains the same, and shares of Alphabet were up more than 1% in early morning trading.
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