OPNFV survey shows support for OpenStack; C Spire plans network upgrade at Ole Miss

Wireless tech news from across the Web:

> The OPNFV Project announced the results of a global survey commissioned by Heavy Reading that shows the majority (68 percent) of respondents cited upstream open source project OpenStack as very important to the success of OPNFV, while close to half cited additional projects including OpenvSwitch (47 percent), Carrier Grade Linux (42 percent), OpenDaylight (40 percent) and KVM (37 percent). Release

> Qualcomm CTO Matt Grob says there is a business case for operators to deploy drones, with the hyped sector sharing much in common with smartphones. Mobile World Live article

> Comcast and Time Warner are investing in virtual reality, the latest traditional media players to bet on the emerging technology amid big disruptions in pay television. Wall Street Journal article (sub. req.)

> C Spire plans to establish a 1 Gigabit-per-second fiber optic-enabled Wi-Fi network in the mezzanine and lobby area of The Pavilion at Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi's new basketball arena. Release

> Flyp is touting a new service that lets its app users make calls and texts for free between the U.S. and 15 countries in Europe. BostInno article

> GPS Source is releasing a new line of GPS/GNSS splitters created for the small cell wireless and distributed antenna system (DAS) markets specifically designed for the L band frequency. Release

> Wireless equipment testing firm Anite has joined the 5Gto10G research project led by the Centre for Wireless Communications at the University of Oulu in Finland. Release

> Amazon announced that it will be selling the Echo personal assistant/Bluetooth speaker at more than 3,000 retail locations across the U.S. in the near future. The Verge article

> AliveCor, which makes a smartphone-connected heart monitor, has hired former Google executive Vic Gundotra as chief executive. Re/code article

> Udacity, run by Google X research lab co-founder Sebastian Thrun, raised $105 million in Series D funding that valued the online education provider at $1 billion. Reuters article

And finally… A look at some Facebook apps and experiments that never quite took off. Article