Telco and Tech News and Insights

U.S. Broadband Speeds Rise as Digital Divide Narrows

U.S. Broadband Speeds Rise as Digital Divide Narrows

Hema Kadia October 29, 2025

According to the latest Speedtest Intelligence findings from Ookla, the share of states where at least 60% of tested fixed-broadband users achieve the FCC’s 100 Mbps down/20 Mbps up benchmark rose sharply between late 2024 and the first half of 2025. That count climbed from 22 states (plus Washington, D.C.) to 38 states (plus D.C.), signaling faster last‑mile networks and better in-home performance for a sizable portion of U.S. households. Progress on equity also accelerated. In the first half of 2025, 33 states reduced the performance gap between urban and rural users—while 17 saw the gap widen versus the second

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MTN StarEdge Horizon: Private Layer 2 over Starlink

MTN StarEdge Horizon: Private Layer 2 over Starlink

Hema Kadia October 29, 2025

MTN has launched StarEdge Horizon, a Layer 2 service over SpaceX’s Starlink designed to move enterprise traffic on a private path to MTN points of presence (PoPs), bypassing the public internet and reducing latency, jitter, and operational complexity. The service extends a private Layer 2 domain from remote sites over Starlink into MTN regional PoPs, where enterprises can centralize internet egress, security, and policy. QoS and segmentation protect prioritized traffic, while multi-link redundancy reduces site-level downtime risks. By bringing a private Layer 2 architecture to Starlink, MTN’s StarEdge Horizon turns LEO from best-effort internet into a controllable enterprise transport.

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SoftBank AI-RAN Realizes - Software-only Massive MIMO on GPU

SoftBank and NVIDIA AI-RAN: 16-Layer MU-MIMO on GPUs

Hema Kadia October 29, 2025

SoftBank and NVIDIA have validated a fully software-defined, GPU-accelerated AI-RAN that delivers 16-layer massive MU-MIMO outdoors—an inflection point for vRAN performance, Open RAN scalability, and AI-native RAN design. SoftBank’s AI-RAN product, AITRAS, executed the entire 5G physical layer on NVIDIA GPUs at the Distributed Unit and demonstrated stable 16-layer multi-user MIMO downlink in an outdoor trial at NVIDIA’s Santa Clara campus. The system connected to O-RAN-compliant radios via Split 7.2x and achieved roughly three times the spectral efficiency and throughput of a conventional 4-layer setup while maintaining per-user rates under high load. The field results show that software-only massive MIMO

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Magic Leap and Google advance AI smart glasses with Android XR

Magic Leap and Google advance AI smart glasses with Android XR

Hema Kadia October 29, 2025

A renewed, three-year collaboration between Magic Leap and Google signals a pragmatic path to AI-capable AR glasses that prioritize visual quality, comfort, and manufacturability. Magic Leap is pivoting from building end-user headsets to becoming an ecosystem partner, offering waveguides, optics, device services, and manufacturing know-how to companies pursuing glasses form factors. The companies are aligning around Android XR, positioning the prototype showcased on stage at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh as a reference for future designs. The prototype highlights advances in see-through clarity, low-power displays, and an industrial design that approximates everyday eyewear.

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The First Deep Dive into ChatGPT Use

The First Deep Dive into ChatGPT Use

Dario Betti, CEO, Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) October 29, 2025

The First Deep Dive into ChatGPT Use, providing some analysis of OpenAI’s First User Study.
Understanding the limits; going from experimentation to integration, key patterns of use; use in education, the healthcare potential; and trends in adoption

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Indian Telecom Operators Raise Tariffs After Three Years

India Telecom Tariffs & 5G: Data Still Cost-Effective

Hema Kadia October 27, 2025

India has ceded the lowest-tariff crown to Bangladesh and Egypt, yet it still leads on value through generous allowances and low data unit costs. Indian base plans commonly include unlimited voice, whereas Bangladesh and Egypt restrict voice to roughly 100 and 70 minutes respectively at entry level. On data, incremental purchase economics are unusually attractive: an extra Rs 100 typically buys around 26 GB, or about Rs 4 per GB, keeping India among the most affordable data markets globally. Even after adjusting for purchasing power parity, India remains at the affordable end of global tariff rankings.

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Qualcomm AI200/AI250 AI Chips for Data Center Inference

Qualcomm AI200/AI250 AI Chips for Data Center Inference

Hema Kadia October 27, 2025

Qualcomm is moving from mobile NPUs into rack-scale AI infrastructure, positioning its AI200 (2026) and AI250 (2027) to challenge Nvidia/AMD on the economics of large-scale inference. The company is translating its Hexagon neural processing unit heritage—refined across phones and PCs—into data center accelerators tuned for inferencing, not training. AI200 and AI250 will ship in liquid-cooled, rack-scale configurations designed to operate as a single logical system. Qualcomm is leaning into that constraint with a redesigned memory subsystem and high-capacity cards supporting up to 768 GB of onboard memory—positioning that as a differentiator versus current GPU offerings.

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Ericsson and SAR bring 5G FRMCS to Saudi Rail

Ericsson and SAR bring 5G FRMCS to Saudi Rail

Hema Kadia October 27, 2025

The partnership targets two fronts: mission-critical rail communications for operations and high-speed broadband for passengers. The scope includes deploying advanced 5G infrastructure, testing FRMCS-based use cases, and running a real-world trial on an existing SAR line to validate performance, integration, and safety requirements. An innovation and test lab will be established to accelerate solution validation, and SAR teams will be trained on FRMCS/5G rail technologies to build in-house capability. The partners will explore 5G Standalone capabilities for operational communications, including quality-of-service guarantees, redundancy, and resilience needed for rail. FRMCS-aligned services such as mission-critical push-to-talk/data/video (MCX), Railway Emergency Call, and secure

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Databricks Integrates OpenAI GPT-5 in $100M AI Bet

SoftBank’s $30B OpenAI Investment Signals AI IPO Push

Hema Kadia October 27, 2025

SoftBank has reportedly approved the final $22.5 billion tranche of a planned $30 billion commitment to OpenAI, tied to the AI firm’s shift to a conventional for‑profit structure and a path to IPO. The investment completes a massive $41 billion financing round for OpenAI that began in April, making it one of the largest private capital raises in tech history. This funding and restructuring signal faster enterprise AI adoption, heavier infrastructure demand, and new platform dynamics that will ripple across networks, cloud, and edge. OpenAI is pushing deeper into enterprise tools, security features, and domain‑specific assistants.

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6G Video Coding: Ericsson, Nokia and Fraunhofer HHI Lead Next Standard

6G Video Coding: Ericsson, Nokia and Fraunhofer HHI Lead Next Standard

Hema Kadia October 27, 2025

Ericsson, Nokia, and Fraunhofer HHI jointly demonstrated a proof‑of‑concept codec that delivers meaningfully higher compression than today’s widely deployed standards—H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, and H.266/VVC—without a notable rise in complexity. The partners emphasize energy efficiency and scalability, which are critical for battery‑powered devices, edge compute, and large streaming workloads. Their submission was positively received by the ITU‑T Video Coding Experts Group and ISO/IEC MPEG, the bodies that jointly steward the H.26x/MPEG lineage. The work is positioned as an on‑ramp to the next standardization phase, targeting readiness to support commercial deployment around 2029–2030, in step with 6G timelines.

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Private Network Leadership Awrads 2026

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