Telecom company opens new Clinton office

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CLINTON, N.Y. — Smart Carrier, a telecom-compliance manager and service provider, recently cut the ribbon on its new office in Clinton. After working for several years from the Mohawk Valley Community College thINCubator in Utica, it was time for the company to expand into space of its own says chief marketing officer and co-founder Rachelle […]

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CLINTON, N.Y. — Smart Carrier, a telecom-compliance manager and service provider, recently cut the ribbon on its new office in Clinton.

After working for several years from the Mohawk Valley Community College thINCubator in Utica, it was time for the company to expand into space of its own says chief marketing officer and co-founder Rachelle Guitán, who operates the business with her husband Orlando Guitán.

Smart Carrier started as a part-time venture about 13 years ago as a telecom and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) consulting firm. In 2019, Orlando Guitán says they began to work on understanding the new Secure Telephone Identity Revisited/Signature-based Handing of Asserted Information Using toKENs (STIR/SHAKEN) protocol issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

All telecommunications providers were required to implement the protocol by June 2021. It’s a framework designed to validate the authenticity of phone calls in order to stop unauthorized spoof calls.

“It turns out there wasn’t any software to do this,” Orlando Guitán says. It took his company about four months to figure out a solution, working in partnership with Amazon Web Services, which provided some funding for the project.

Now Smart Carrier offers its solution to U.S.–based small- to medium-sized phone companies, call centers, and others so they can make the calls required for their businesses.

“Every phone call needs to have a token attached to it,” Guitán says. Smart Carrier provides that token for its clients, which lets the carrier at the other end of the call know that it’s a legitimate one.

“We like to keep the good guys in and the bad guys out,” Rachelle Guitán says. This helps Smart Carrier customers keep their contact rates high and helps them regain consumer trust after years of receiving junk robocalls and other spam calls trying to scam information.

In simple terms, Smart Carrier’s technology allows the automated call from your doctor’s office reminding you of an upcoming appointment to go through, she says, while blocking the “you’ve won a cruise” junk call. It also makes it easier for people to just go ahead and answer the call instead of having to screen every call in case it’s junk, she adds.

It may not seem like a lot, but Smart Carrier conducts about 25,000 token transactions every second.

With the new office space in Clinton, Smart Carrier is hoping to connect with more Oneida County businesses, Rachelle Guitán says.

Currently, Smart Carrier occupies two offices in shared space at 43 College St., with hopes of adding a third office soon, she says. The company also operates an office on Williams Street.

Smart Carrier has 13 employees, including contractors, and is also working hard to be involved in its new Mohawk Valley community. The company participated in several June events including a blood drive, a benefit for the Neighborhood Center, and the Heart Run & Walk. It also sponsored a Clinton Little League Community Day in conjunction with the Utica Blue Sox.

Smart Carrier’s solutions also include Smart Caller ID, AI answering detection in conjunction with Khomp International, and more.

Oneida County announces broadband expansion project in Vienna

Law, Accounting & Taxes, Regional News, Subscriber Only, Technology

VIENNA, N.Y. — Nearly 1,000 homes and 2,600 residents will now receive high-speed internet services as part of Oneida County’s $2 million in broadband-expansion projects, County Executive Anthony J. Picente, Jr. announced. “We are committed to bridging the gaps the became evident during the pandemic,” Picente said in a news release. “Lack of high-speed internet

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“We are committed to bridging the gaps the became evident during the pandemic,” Picente said in a news release. “Lack of high-speed internet creates an inequity that puts students at a disadvantage, leaves businesses unable to modernize, and limits growth in communities. Broadband is something that everyone should have access to, and this is a step toward making that a reality for everyone in Oneida County.”

The expansion projects cover 10 areas including six towns — Forestport, Ava, Boonville, Remsen, Augusta, and Vienna — working with two internet-service providers selected through a request for proposals (RFP) process. Adirondack Techs will handle nine project areas and Charter will handle the remaining area.

The $1,950,967 capital program includes $150,000 in internet-service provider (ISP) investment and nine of the projects include a 2 percent revenue share to offset a percentage of the cost to the county.

An extensive mapping analysis between Oneida and Herkimer counties, the Tug Hill Commission, and Mohawk Valley Economic Development District allowed the Oneida County Department of Planning to identify 2,079 Oneida County homes in about 32 areas with clusters of 20 or more homes. This first step of the initiative will reach 46 percent of the unserved homes identified.

Oneida County offered municipalities the opportunity to partner financially and leverage the funding to expand coverage even further into their communities. The Town of Vienna was the only municipality to take the county up on the offer, which led to the town securing $226,761 to service 111 homes.

“Since becoming town supervisor, the expansion of internet service is something I hear about most often from residents and was an issue I have looked to tackle since day one,” Town of Vienna Supervisor Michael M. Davis, Sr. said.

Oneida County is utilizing American Rescue Act funding to expand internet service to underserved areas of the county. The federal funding must be allocated by 2024 and spent by 2026 on projects, initiatives, or programs that address issues exacerbated by the pandemic.

SUNY Poly joins UB on Internet of Things lab project

Health Care, Regional News, Subscriber Only, Technology

MARCY, N.Y. — Faculty at SUNY Polytechnic Institute and the University at Buffalo (UB) have partnered on a project called SUNY OpenIoTLab: The SUNY Laboratory Federation for Wireless Intelligent Internet of Things. The project received a $60,000 SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology grant. The initiative will develop UnionLabs, an open, cloud-enabled federation of heterogeneous testbeds for

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The project received a $60,000 SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology grant. The initiative will develop UnionLabs, an open, cloud-enabled federation of heterogeneous testbeds for sharing data, code, software, and hardware resources for research in next-generation networks and wireless Internet of Things.

The joint effort is led by UB’s Zhangyu Guan and Nicholas Mastronarde, along with SUNY Poly Associate Professor Timothy E. Busch of the electrical and computer engineering program. Other key project personnel include associate professors Michael J. Medley, Daniel Benincasa, and Arjun Singh with Adjunct Professor Chester Wright.

“Given the evolution of wireless network systems in recent years and the impact on our daily lives, there is a great need for a shared resource for collaboration, education, and experimentation of these systems,” Busch said in a press release. “Significant efforts have been made to fill the void, and this project between SUNY Poly and the University at Buffalo is yet another step forward. We are grateful for this grant and for the support we have received from our peers, project partners, and institutions.”

The proposed UnionLabs initiative will provide the Air Force, UB, and the wireless community an open experimental ecosystem where researchers and engineers can collaborate and share resources. Once deployed, UnionLabs would serve as the global entry for academia, the U.S. Department of Defense, and industrial researchers to conduct experimental research in the field of next-generation networks and wireless Internet of Things.

UnionLabs’ objectives include: creating a collaborative campaign to democratize access to wireless research testbeds with heterogeneous hardware resources and network environments spanning aerial, ground, underwater, and underground domains, and in a wide range of frequency bands, from sub-6 GHz up to the mmWave and terahertz bands, per the release. It also seeks to deploy a federation plane that will be hosted in the Amazon Web Service (AWS) cloud to bridge the testbeds and users and enable researchers to share, remotely access, and control their resources and conduct experiments collaboratively via a unified user interface. Another goal is to build a two-tier cloud, comprising a public cloud powered by AWS and edge computing resources at individual wireless systems to allow researchers to share experimental datasets, wireless communication, networking and sensing algorithms/code, and evaluate them over heterogeneous testbeds.

UnionLabs’ federation plane APIs will be made available for other wireless testbeds to join the federation. The team also plans to eventually commercialize it by launching a startup.

Genius NY finalists begin prepping for October pitch event

Manufacturing & Engineering, Small Business, Subscriber Only, Technology

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The seventh round of the Genius NY business-accelerator program at the Tech Garden in Syracuse has five finalists looking ahead to the final pitch event in October. Genius NY stands for Growing ENtrepreneurs & Innovators in UpState New York. The teams are from New York City, Maryland, Michigan, the United Kingdom, and

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SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The seventh round of the Genius NY business-accelerator program at the Tech Garden in Syracuse has five finalists looking ahead to the final pitch event in October.

Genius NY stands for Growing ENtrepreneurs & Innovators in UpState New York.

The teams are from New York City, Maryland, Michigan, the United Kingdom, and Florida, Empire State Development (ESD) announced.

The program is described as the “largest business accelerator for the UAS industry in the world.” An uncrewed-aircraft system (UAS) includes a drone and equipment used to control its flight. A drone is also referred to in the industry as an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV.

The five finalists are the following startups.

• Voltela is from the Brooklyn borough of New York City and provides connectivity assurance for commercial drones. “Remote pilots must rely on reliable Command and Control connections. The mobile network was not built for aerial connectivity and changing the infrastructure is not viable. Voltela’s patented software operates with off-the-shelf modems enabling prioritized connections with guaranteed low latency via any mobile network. Voltela’s superior connectivity performance achieves aviation-grade reliability levels and is the foundation for building the Aerial Virtual Network Operator,” as described in an ESD news release.

• Aloft from Silver Spring, Maryland is an FAA-approved UAS service supplier (USS) for LAANC (low altitude authorization and notification capability), “powering the vast majority of recreational and commercial airspace authorizations … Through state-of-the-art technologies and sophisticated data services, Aloft aims to enhance the safety and efficiency of drone operations, facilitating their integration into the National Airspace System,” ESD said.

• Blueflite from Detroit, Michigan is a company designing and manufacturing a logistics drone platform to solve the “modern-day challenges in the logistics industry. Blueflite’s drones offer faster and greener deliveries at a lower cost compared to conventional transport. The unique and patent pending tiltrotor design features vectored thrust giving it unrivaled maneuverability and the ability to operate under challenging conditions. The digital element of the platform allows for integration into an all-automated supply chain for high-speed deliveries at scale,” ESD stated.

• Greenjets from Milton Keynes, United Kingdom is building next generation electric propulsion systems for advanced air mobility. Its “ducted fan propulsion technology is the quietest, safest and most efficient of its class. The Greenjets team has over 300 years of deep domain knowledge carried over from Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems & Formula 1. Learnings from these experiences are reflected in a unique design & manufacturing methodology, which allows production of propulsion systems at an unrivaled pace, the release contended.

• Votix of Weston, Florida is an “American Enterprise Drone Orchestration and Automation platform and the first universal (hardware-agnostic) drone operating system for commercial operations at scale. “VOTIX integrates the entire drone ecosystem, ensuring high-quality results, and safe and robust operations, guaranteeing compliance with regulators and stakeholders, creating synergies within the industry’s ecosystem, reducing process time and generating superior intelligence. VOTIX supports VLOS/EVLOS while enabling BVLOS operations, autonomous flights, real-time cloud video streaming and AI, precision landing, drone-in-a-box integration and much more,” per the ESD description.

Starting July 12, the five selected companies were scheduled to move into downtown Syracuse where they will begin to refine work on their business cases, which they’ll present at the pitch finals event on Oct. 4.

The five finalists were selected from a pool of more than 450 submissions. They will compete for $3 million in direct investment, with one grand prize of up to $1 million and four $500,000 awards.

Supported by the CNY Rising Upstate Revitalization Initiative and administered by CenterState CEO and the Tech Garden in downtown Syracuse, these startup, uncrewed-systems industry companies will participate in a yearlong program.

“The GENIUS NY accelerator has helped to establish Central New York as a hub for uncrewed aerial systems by attracting the next generation of innovative entrepreneurs,” said Empire State Development president, CEO, and commissioner Hope Knight. “New York State’s ongoing UAS investment will ensure that continued industry leadership, bringing top-quality jobs and growth to the region and beyond.”

Genius NY participants are required to commit to operating their business in Central New York for at least one year.

Schumer details how Congress can harness AI’s benefits

Manufacturing & Engineering, Subscriber Only, Technology

It was a speech outlining his vision for how Congress can harness the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and protect society from its “potential harms.” U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) on June 21 spoke on the topic of “SAFE Innovation in the AI Age” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

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It was a speech outlining his vision for how Congress can harness the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and protect society from its “potential harms.”

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) on June 21 spoke on the topic of “SAFE Innovation in the AI Age” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., his office said.

The Senate leader was joined by Manish Bhatia, executive VP of Boise, Idaho–based Micron Technology Inc., which is building a semiconductor campus in Clay, and Jonathan Adashek, chief communications officer and senior VP of IBM.

Schumer said that as AI transforms the world around us, leading manufacturers and innovators of semiconductor chips like Micron and IBM “will be at the center,” and the increased demand for their products will help “boost business” for the companies in the years ahead.

Portion of Schumer’s remarks

In his address, Schumer outlined a two-part proposal to move the nation forward on AI: one part on framework, one part on process.

“First, Congress needs a framework for action…what should our framework be? What issues within AI should we look at to prepare legislation?” Schumer pondered.

After months of talks with more than 100 AI developers, executives, scientists, researchers, workforce experts, and advocates, Schumer shared his proposed blueprint for action.

He calls it the SAFE Innovation Framework for AI policy.

“The SAFE Innovation Framework. I call it that because Innovation must be our north star. The U.S. has always been a leader in innovating on the greatest technologies that shape the modern world,” the senator said.

He went on to say, “But if people think AI innovation is not done safely, if there are not adequate guardrails in place, it will stifle or even halt innovation altogether. So it is SAFE innovation that we must seek.”

Second, Congress will also need to invent a new process to develop the right policies to implement the framework.

“AI moves so quickly and changes at a near exponential speed, and there’s such little legislative history on this issue, so a new process is called for. The traditional approach of Committee hearings play an essential role, but on their own won’t suffice. We will need help from creators, innovators, and experts in the field,” Schumer noted. “That is why later this year, I will invite the top AI experts to come to Congress and convene a series of first-ever AI Insight Forums, for a new and unique approach to developing AI legislation.”

Hodge rejoins MACNY as director of Partners For Education & Business

Employee Benefits & Human Resources, Health Care, Manufacturing & Engineering, People on the Move, Subscriber Only

DeWITT, N.Y. — MACNY, The Manufacturers Association, recently welcomed Taylor Hodge back to the team as director of Partners for Education & Business, Inc. Stepping down from her role as director, Tanya M. Eastman will remain with MACNY as senior advisor for STEM workforce initiatives, the association said in a June 26 release. Hodge was

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MACNY appoints Pipes as chief growth & development officer

Employee Benefits & Human Resources, Manufacturing & Engineering, New York News, People on the Move, Subscriber Only

DeWITT, N.Y. — MACNY, The Manufacturers Association, recently welcomed Kyle Pipes to the organization as its chief growth & development officer. He started in his position on July 1. Pipes brings MACNY experience in helping develop organizational culture. He is especially skilled at assisting organizations through assessment and development of relational habits, leadership, healthy systems,

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Oswego Health promotes two in Info Services & Technology Department

Health Care, Subscriber Only, Technology

A clinical analyst III manager offers support to all 1,300 employees at Oswego Health. From day-to-day technological demands to troubleshooting clinical requests, to process and workflow efficiencies, both Windey and Bacon play a key role in the organization’s equipment integration and updates, Oswego Health said in a June 20 release. In addition, they work side-by-side

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Windey, a registered nurse, started at Oswego Health in 2000 as a nurse aide in the Medical Surgical Unit at Oswego Hospital. For the past 23 years, she has held various positions as a registered nurse, including clinical trainer for the health-care system, before understanding her passion was in information services & technology. That came when Windey was asked to advise on the adoption of a new clinical technology that would assist with patient care. In 2011, Windey transitioned to the IS&T department as an IS&T clinical analyst II. In 2013, she was promoted to clinical analyst III and now, clinical analyst III manager.

Bacon started working at Oswego Health in 2005, originally in the Pharmacy Department at Oswego Hospital as a technician. In 2011, she was also tasked with assisting the IS&T department with a new clinical platform and quickly realized how both careers could overlap. Bacon was then promoted to pharmacy IT technician before transitioning fully to the department in 2013 as an IS&T clinical analyst II, then a clinical analyst III in 2017, before earning her new title as clinical analyst III manager.

“It gives me immense pleasure to announce the promotion of Brooke and Jennifer to Managers in our Applications Department. They have both been an integral part of the IS&T Clinical Applications Team for more than a decade and have been instrumental in building and deploying the applications that we have today. We are all so proud of their accomplishments and are eager to see their continued growth in the organization,” Barry Ryle, Oswego Health’s VP of information systems & chief information officer, said in the release.

Visit Binghamton receives award for website

Nonprofits, Regional News, Small Business, Sports, Entertainment & Tourism, Subscriber Only, Technology

BINGHAMTON, N,Y. — Visit Binghamton, the tourism organization promoting the attractions and experiences of Broome County, announced it has received the 2023 Award of Excellence in the travel and tourism category by The Communicator Awards. The awards celebrate creative excellence among marketing and communications professionals. Visit Binghamton said it was honored for its website, which

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MVCC names director of Airframe & Powerplant program

Manufacturing & Engineering, Regional News, Subscriber Only, Technology

UTICA, N.Y. — Mohawk Valley Community College (MVCC) has announced that Walter Constantini, previously director of Aviation Programs, has transitioned to the role of director of the Airframe & Powerplant program. In his new role, he will be responsible for planning, leadership, and administration of the Airframe & Powerplant program and other Federal Aviation Administration

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