Hema Kadia

Tech News & Insight
Google has introduced a sharply priced AI Plus subscription in India to push generative AI into the mass market and counter OpenAIโ€™s ChatGPT Go. The AI Plus plan launches at โ‚น199 per month for new users for six months, then moves to โ‚น399 per month. The bundle raises usage limits for Gemini 3 Pro, unlocks video generation within Googleโ€™s apps, expands NotebookLMโ€™s โ€œdeep researchโ€ capabilities, and adds 200GB of storage across Google Photos, Drive, and Gmail. Family sharing is included, signaling a household-centric growth strategy.
Tech News & Insight
Rogers Communications has moved from beta to a commercial footprint for satellite-to-mobile in Canada, extending basic connectivity and select apps to consumer smartphones while adding an industrial IoT tier for remote operations. The new Rogers Satellite service enables a curated set of popular apps to work beyond terrestrial coverage, including WhatsApp calling, Google Maps, AccuWeather, X, and CalTopo on most modern smartphones. In parallel, Rogers introduced satellite-to-mobile for IoT businesses, targeting asset tracking along highways and rail, as well as sensor telemetry in forestry, mining, and other resource sectors where terrestrial cellular is sparse.
Tech News & Insight
The latest 3GPP cycle consolidates 5G-Advanced (Release 18), sets the agenda for Release 19, and frames early 6G studies, with direct implications for operator investment, enterprise use cases, and vendor roadmaps. Release 18, the first phase of 5G-Advanced, is moving from standards completion into implementation, bringing carrier-grade enhancements in spectral efficiency, energy savings, and mobility performance. Release 19 now builds on these foundations, prioritizing further RAN efficiency, XR and video delivery at scale, richer analytics/exposure in the core (NWDAF, NEF/CAPIF), and enterprise-grade reliability across private and public networks.
Tech News & Insight
Paramount Skydance launched a hostile, board-bypassing tender offer to acquire all of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) at $30 per share, valuing the company at about $108 billion on an enterprise basis. The bid arrives days after WBD agreed to sell its studio and streaming assetsโ€”including Warner Bros. studios, HBO, and Maxโ€”to Netflix in a cash-and-stock deal valued at roughly $72 billion. Paramountโ€™s pitch: more cash, full-company certainty, and a quicker path to close. The outcome will determine control of premium U.S. content, set the pace of streaming consolidation, and ripple into network traffic, advertising markets, and device and distribution partnerships.
Tech News & Insight
3GPP has become the organizing framework for how public safety, utilities, transportation and enterprise security adopt LTE/5G for mission-critical communications (MCX). For mission-critical users, 3GPPโ€™s scope includes capabilities such as push-to-talk, data and video designed for high availability, priority, pre-emption and end-to-end security. For agencies and enterprises, the value of 3GPP is practical: it lowers integration risk, clarifies feature expectations and aligns multi-year investment roadmaps. Standards are the foundation; operational reliability is the measure of success. 3GPP is the baseline for resilient, interoperable operations.
Tech News & Insight
Disney will invest $1 billion in OpenAI and become Soraโ€™s first major content licensing partner, enabling fans to generate and share short videos that feature more than 200 characters and environments from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. The agreement spans three years, excludes actor likenesses and voices, and extends to ChatGPT Images for IPโ€‘compliant image generation. Disney will adopt OpenAI APIs across products and operations, including features for Disney+ and employee productivity, and may showcase select user creations on its streaming service. This agreement formalizes licensed synthetic media at scale and accelerates the convergence of UGC, premium IP, and AI tooling.
Tech News & Insight
IBM has agreed to acquire Confluent for $31 per share in cash, signaling a decisive move to make real-time, governed data the backbone of generative and agentic AI across hybrid cloud environments. The transaction values Confluent at an enterprise value of roughly $11 billion, with closing targeted by mid-2026 pending shareholder and regulatory approvals. Together they aim to unify application, data, and AI pipelines across public clouds, private data centers, and edge locationsโ€”reducing integration friction and accelerating time to value for enterprise AI.
Tech News & Insight
Reliance Jioโ€™s path to a mid-2026 IPO is increasingly intertwined with the timing and magnitude of Indiaโ€™s next mobile tariff hike. Domestic brokers argue Jio has a tactical reason to push back on near-term tariff increases: hikes tend to accelerate Bharti Airtelโ€™s revenue market share (RMS) gains more than Jioโ€™s, narrowing the lead at the worst possible time for an IPO. Airtel has been the key beneficiary of previous price actions, chipping away at Jioโ€™s RMS advantage by almost two percentage points since mid-2024. On current assumptions, Jio is informally pegged around $153 billion, implying an EV/EBITDA multiple near the low teens.
Tech News & Insight
A strategic merger to accelerate standardized 5G NTN Cobham Satcom is merging its Network Division with Gatehouse Satcom to push 3GPP-based non-terrestrial networks from trials to scalable deployments. The combined entity will sit as a subsidiary within Cobham Satcom Group, led by Kenney Schmidt Christiansen, Gatehouse Satcomโ€™s current CEO. Cobham Satcom will hold a majority stake and continue to serve maritime, government, and enterprise customers through its SAILOR, Sea Tel, EXPLORER, and TRACKER brands. The transaction requires standard regulatory approvals but positions both companies to offer an end-to-end 5G NTN platform spanning software, ground infrastructure, and terminals.
Tech News & Insight
A potential takeโ€‘private of DigitalBridge by SoftBank would concentrate capital, power, and build capability at the precise chokepoints of the AI and telecom stack. The center of gravity in AI infrastructure has moved from buildings and GPUs to grid access, entitlements, and construction lead time. DigitalBridge controls rights to roughly 21 GW of power across its global portfolioโ€”effectively a banked inventory of megawatts that can be turned into contracted capacity faster than new entrants can clear interconnection queues or procure transformers. This transaction is fundamentally about compressing multiโ€‘year build timelines for AI factories into quarters.
Tech News & Insight
New data points to a step-change in cellular IoT adoption as 5G broadens into mid-tier and massive-scale use cases while 4G-era LPWA keeps expanding. Omdia forecasts cellular IoT connections to reach roughly 5.9 billion by 2035, driven by expanding addressable use cases across industrial automation, utilities, transportation, retail, and consumer-adjacent categories such as wearables. The growth profile is no longer tied only to premium 5G performance; instead, scaled adoption is coming from three complementary pillars: 5G RedCap for mid-tier performance at lower cost, 5G Massive IoT (evolving NB-IoT/LTE-M under a 5G core), and 4G LTE Cat-1bis for low-cost devices that still require voice or moderate throughput.
Tech News & Insight
The administration plans an executive order to set a single national AI rulebook and override state-level frameworks, a move with immediate implications for telecom, cloud, and enterprise AI strategies. President Trump signaled he will sign an executive order establishing a uniform federal approach to AI governance that preempts state regulations. Reports indicate the order aims to reduce compliance friction by replacing diverse state rules with a lighter-touch national framework focused on competitiveness. State officials from both parties, safety advocates, and labor groups are preparing to fight the order, citing risks related to consumer harm, deepfakes, hiring bias, and child safety. On the other side, Silicon Valley leaders warn that 50-state compliance regimes could deter innovation and blunt national competitiveness.
Tech News & Insight
The FAA has tapped Peraton as prime integrator for a multiโ€‘year modernization of the National Airspace System (NAS), setting in motion a telecom-heavy refresh of networks, radios, and control systems at national scale. The FAA selected Peraton, owned by Veritas Capital, as the single program integrator to manage an initial $12.5 billion upgrade of the aging U.S. air traffic control system. Officials are targeting a three-year execution window to cut outages, improve efficiency, and reinforce safety across the NAS, with additional funding in the $19โ€“20 billion range likely required to fully complete the plan.
Tech News & Insight
New consumer research commissioned by Viasat and executed by GSMA Intelligence signals that non-terrestrial networks (NTN) are becoming a mainstream buying factor for mobile subscribers. The survey of more than 12,000 smartphone users across 12 countries finds persistent coverage gaps: over a third of respondents lose basic cellular service multiple times per month. That pain point is translating into intent. Roughly six in ten consumers say they would pay extra for satellite-enabled connectivity on their phones, and nearly half indicate they would switch operators if outโ€‘ofโ€‘coverage service were included in their plan. On average, those willing to pay would accept a 5โ€“7% uplift on their current monthly bill, with outliers such as India approaching a 9% premium.
Tech News & Insight
The Indian government has floated draft rules that refine how mobile operators can share spectrum, aiming to boost spectral efficiency and accelerate 5G expansion under the new telecommunications regulatory framework. The draft rules seek to formalize spectrum sharing under the new regime, giving operators a clearer pathway to pool or share spectrum holdings while ensuring compliance with license conditions. In practical terms, telcos would gain a more predictable mechanism to use underutilized spectrum, improve coverage, and optimize capacity without always resorting to new auctions or heavy capex.
Tech News & Insight
Work at local distribution points often triggers unintended service cuts, driving spikes in complaints, repeat truck rolls, and SLA penalties. By empowering on-site technicians to detect and remediate cuts instantlyโ€”rather than wait for back-office workflowsโ€”operators can compress mean time to repair, avoid secondary visits, and reduce inbound support volume. The result is fewer avoidable outages and a more predictable experience for consumers and businesses using fiber for VPN, SD-WAN, and cloud access. Previous collaboration (Lot 1) notified operators when their customers were impacted by nearby work, but the model was still largely reactive. Lot 2 integrates detection and authorization directly into techniciansโ€™ mobile tools.
Tech News & Insight
Switzerlandโ€™s SBB has deployed an Ericsson IMS/VoLTE platform that interworks with legacy GSM-R, delivering Europeโ€™s first live bridge between public 4G voice and mission-critical railway communications. Ericsson and SBB completed a nationwide IMS/VoLTE integration that extends reliable voice communications across Switzerlandโ€™s 3,100 km rail network and removes dependency on public 3G roaming for coverage gaps outside GSM-R footprints. The IMS core integrates multi-supplier elements and preserves EIRENE features such as functional numbering, group calls, emergency stop calls, and onboard announcements, ensuring safety-critical behavior is maintained. It also demonstrates that mission-critical requirements can be met over modern IP telephony when engineered with the right interworking, governance, and testing.
Tech News & Insight
This dispute underscores the weakness of todayโ€™s data-sharing โ€œplumbing.โ€ Scraping is brittle, hard to audit, and raises legal risk. The industry will likely move toward standardized, consent-driven APIs that let customers securely share specific data fields for comparison and switching. Telecom can borrow from open banking: OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect flows, fine-grained scopes, auditable logs, and tokenized access with time limits. TM Forum Open APIs and carrier-to-carrier data-sharing frameworks could underpin such exchanges, while CTIA and GSMA initiatives provide governance. Done right, portability can be fast for consumers and compliant for operators.
Tech News & Insight
The FCC has approved AT&Tโ€™s agreement to acquire a portfolio of UScellular wireless spectrum licenses for $1.02 billion, advancing AT&Tโ€™s mid-band capacity strategy and reshaping competitive dynamics in U.S. 5G markets. The licenses span select UScellular markets, bolstering AT&Tโ€™s holdings in areas where UScellular has long operated, including rural and midwestern regions. With FCC consent in hand, the parties can proceed to closing market by market, subject to routine administrative steps and any local obligations. Mid-band spectrum remains the sweet spot for balanced capacity and coverage. This positions AT&T to better support RedCap devices, uplink-sensitive applications, and the early wave of 5G-Advanced features.
Tech News & Insight
Netflix plans to acquire Warner Bros. Discoveryโ€™s studio and streaming assets in a $72 billion transaction that could reshape streaming, theatrical distribution, and the broader media supply chain. The cash-and-stock offer values Warner at $27.75 per share and implies an enterprise value of $82.7 billion including debt. The combination would join Netflixโ€™s global streaming leader with Warnerโ€™s television and motion picture divisions, including HBO, HBO Max, and DC Studios. Closing is targeted within 12โ€“18 months, subject to regulatory clearance. The deal encompasses Warnerโ€™s studios and streaming businesses and their associated IP libraries.
Tech News & Insight
Versantโ€™s lineup spans USA Network, CNBC, MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), Oxygen, E!, SYFY and Golf Channel, plus Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow, GolfPass and SportsEngine. Management argues the reach of up to ~65 million households and a 62% live programming mix gives it durable leverage in news and sports while it builds digital and direct-to-consumer (DTC) revenue. For MVPDs, vMVPDs and broadband providers, this is a new negotiating counterparty with incentives to protect affiliate value while expanding FAST, OTA and DTC channels that can bypass bundles. Versant stock will trade on Nasdaq as VSNT starting January 5, 2026.
Tech News & Insight
Indiaโ€™s Department of Telecommunications has ordered major messaging apps to implement continuous SIM binding and frequent web re-authentication to curb fraud, with compliance expected in early 2026. The directive applies to app-based communication platforms that use mobile numbers as identifiers, including WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Snapchat, ShareChat, JioChat, Josh, and regional players like Arattai. Apps must continuously verify that the SIM linked to the registered number is present and active on the device, not just at account setup. Additionally, web sessions (e.g., WhatsApp Web) must auto-logout every six hours, forcing users to re-link via QR code.
Tech News & Insight
Vodafone is accelerating a multi-year resilience programme to keep emergency and critical services online during grid failures, an issue that is moving from rare-event planning to board-level risk management. In response, Vodafone fast-tracked its Enhanced Power initiative to harden more than 10,000 critical mobile access sites across Europe over the next two years, starting in Portugal. The system uses AI to predict outages, throttle non-essential loads, and place selected radio elements into low-energy modes, preserving channels for emergency calls, SMS, and priority users. More than 400 core and backbone facilities in the EU are provisioned with batteries and diesel generators for at least 72 hours of backup or guaranteed refueling within 48 hours.
Tech News & Insight
Skyfora and LMT demonstrated a real-time, kilometer-scale GNSS meteorology grid running on LMTโ€™s 5G network at NATOโ€™s Digital Backbone Experimentation (DiBaX), signaling a new class of โ€œnetwork-as-a-sensorโ€ capability for Europe. At DiBaX in Latvia, LMTโ€™s 5G sites equipped with Skyforaโ€™s Weather Engine streamed continuous atmospheric measurements derived from small, measurable delays in GNSS signals as they traverse humid air. The result was a rapid-update observation grid delivering near real-time insights into the evolution of storms, extreme rainfall, flood risk, and heat stress across large areas, without deploying new physical weather stations.
Tech News & Insight
Nvidia used NeurIPS to expand an open toolkit for digital and physical AI, with a flagship reasoning model for autonomous driving and a broader stack that targets speech, safety, and reinforcement learning. Nvidia introduced DRIVE Alpamayo-R1 (AR1), an open vision-language-action model that fuses multimodal perception with chain-of-thought reasoning and path planning, aiming to push toward Level 4 autonomy in constrained domains. To lower adoption friction, Nvidia published the Cosmos Cookbook with step-by-step recipes for data curation, synthetic data generation, inference, and post-training workflows, enabling customization for diverse physical AI use cases.
Tech News & Insight
Two German heavyweights are in advanced discussions to co-build large-scale AI data centre capacity in Germany, a move that would tap European Union funding and accelerate sovereign AI infrastructure. Deutsche Telekom and the Schwarz Group are exploring a joint bid to develop EU-supported โ€œAI Gigafactoryโ€ facilities, data centres purpose-built for high-density AI training and inference. According to multiple reports, the talks are well progressed but not yet final. Infrastructure investor Brookfield has been flagged as a potential financial partner alongside EU capital, adding balance-sheet depth and construction expertise to the consortium.
Tech News & Insight
Amazon Web Services plans a sweeping expansion of classified and government cloud capacity to accelerate AI and highโ€‘performance computing for U.S. agencies. AWS will invest up to $50 billion starting in 2026 to deliver purposeโ€‘built AI and HPC infrastructure for federal customers. The buildout spans AWS Top Secret, AWS Secret, and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. The expansion is designed to compress analysis timelines and enable AIโ€‘assisted workflows across national security and civil missions. AWS is making a generational bet that AI and HPC, delivered inside accredited government regions at massive scale, will redefine how federal missions operate.
Tech News & Insight
A high-stakes policy fight has emerged in India over the 6 GHz band, pitting global device and cloud ecosystems against mobile operators over whether the band should power unlicensed Wiโ€‘Fi or licensed mobile (IMT) networks. Apple, Amazon, Cisco, Meta, HP, and Intel have jointly urged Indiaโ€™s regulator, TRAI, to reserve the full 6 GHz range for Wiโ€‘Fi, arguing the band is not technically or commercially ready for IMT and that unlicensed use will deliver immediate, widespread capacity benefits. Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea have countered that delicensing upper 6 GHz would permanently foreclose Indiaโ€™s option to deploy wideโ€‘area licensed broadband in prime midโ€‘band spectrum.
Tech News & Insight
Nokia is making a multiโ€‘year, $4 billion push to expand US R&D and manufacturing as it pivots to AIโ€‘native networks under CEO Justin Hotard. The company will invest roughly $3.5 billion in USโ€‘based R&D spanning networking technologies, defense applications, automation, quantumโ€‘safe networking, and semiconductor development. A further $500 million targets manufacturing and R&D expansion in Texas, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, strengthening domestic supply chains for critical telecom gear. The plan follows Nokiaโ€™s strategy revamp and creation of a Mobile Infrastructure unit to advance an AIโ€‘native network portfolio across RAN, transport, IP, and cloud.
Tech News & Insight
Policy choices over the next two years will set the capacity ceiling for 6G-era services through the 2030s. Mobile traffic is overwhelmingly urban, concentrated in a small fraction of national land areas and rising fastest in very dense zones. The GSMAโ€™s new Vision 2040 analysis concludes these levers will not keep pace with demand growth on their own. The modeling indicates countries will need, on average, 2โ€“3 GHz of total mid-band assigned for mobile by 2035โ€“2040 to meet peak urban demand; higher-demand markets trend toward 2.5โ€“4 GHz. Crucially, about 2 GHz needs to be operational by 2030 to avoid early congestion as 6G arrives.
Tech News & Insight
Nvidiaโ€™s CEO has warned that U.S. export controls have effectively halted the companyโ€™s China business, sharpening the stakes for AI leadership, supply chains, and enterprise buyers. He indicated the company is modeling China sales at effectively zero for the next two quarters under current rules, acknowledging that the revenue loss constrains reinvestment in R&D and manufacturing capacity. The message was blunt: a prolonged lockout weakens the U.S. AI stack abroad and cedes room to rivals at home and overseas. Huang pegged Chinaโ€™s accelerator market at roughly $50 billion today with potential to reach up to $200 billion by decadeโ€™s end.
Tech News & Insight
Ericssonโ€™s latest Mobility Report points to a clear shift: operators are turning 5G capabilities into differentiated, SLA-backed services rather than just selling more data at higher speeds. After years of building coverage and capacity, 5G networks are mature enough to commercialize features like guaranteed latency, uplink boosts, and application-aware prioritization. The catalysts are in place: more 5G Standalone (SA) cores, rising traffic from video creation and immersive apps, and enterprise demand for predictable performance across sites and clouds. The net result is momentum behind premium, differentiated connectivity that can be priced, assured, and exposed to partners.
Tech News & Insight
Deutsche Telekomโ€™s T-Systems has secured a multi-million-euro contract from Leibniz University Hannover to power SOOFI, a flagship initiative to build a 100-billion-parameter, European-operated large language model. The SOOFI (Sovereign Open Source Foundation Models) project will train a next-generation, open-source LLM focused on European languages and industrial requirements, replacing the current 7-billion-parameter Teuken7B with a model two orders of magnitude larger. T-Systems will host and operate the training environment in its new Industrial AI Cloudโ€”an NVIDIA-powered facility that DT and NVIDIA unveiled as part of a โ‚ฌ1 billion partnership.
Tech News & Insight
Indiaโ€™s 5G market has entered a scale phase, with momentum pointing to more than a billion subscribers and deeper network modernization over the next six years. Ericssonโ€™s latest Mobility Report projects over 1 billion 5G subscriptions in India by end-2031, representing about 79% of the countryโ€™s mobile base. Average mobile data usage per active smartphone in India stands near 36 GB per month and is forecast to approach 65 GB per month by 2031. Two demand-side levers stand out: affordable 5G devices and expanding Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), accelerating mainstream adoption and opening a credible substitute to wired broadband in underserved areas.
Tech News & Insight
Verizon will cut more than 13,000 roles as part of a broader restructuring aimed at simplifying operations and resetting its cost base for the next phase of growth. The reduction represents roughly 13% of Verizonโ€™s reported ~100,000 full-time workforce and about one-fifth of its non-union management ranks, according to figures shared alongside the announcement. In parallel, Verizon plans to curb outsourcing and other external labor spending, convert 179 company-owned retail stores to franchise operations, and shutter one store. The restructuring reflects subscriber headwinds and a need to rebalance costs as 5G investment priorities shift from buildout to monetization and automation.
Tech News & Insight
The FCC has advanced a rulemaking that would free up a significant slice of upper C-band spectrum for 5G and future 6G services, setting the stage for a high-stakes auction and complex satellite transition by mid-2027. The Commission unanimously approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to clear and auction between 100 and 180 megahertz in the 3.98โ€“4.2 GHz band (upper C-band) via competitive bidding. Because 3GPP band n77 already extends up to 4.2 GHz globally, much of the 5G device and radio ecosystem can support this expansion with minimal modification, accelerating time-to-market for carriers once licenses are granted.
Tech News & Insight
Nvidiaโ€™s latest quarter signals that AI infrastructure spending is not cooling and is, in fact, broadening across clouds, sovereigns, and enterprises. Nvidia delivered $57 billion in revenue for the quarter, up more than 60% year over year, with GAAP net income reaching $32 billion; the data center segment accounted for roughly $51.2 billion, dwarfing gaming, pro visualization, and automotive combined. Management guided next-quarter sales to about $65 billion, exceeding consensus by several billion and underscoring that supply remains tight for cloud GPUs even as deployments ramp across hyperscalers, GPU clouds, national AI initiatives, and large enterprises.
Tech News & Insight
Palo Alto Networks is buying Chronosphere to fuse cost-efficient, large-scale observability with AI-driven automation for modern cloud and AI data centers. Palo Alto Networks agreed to acquire Chronosphere for approximately $3.35 billion in a mix of cash and replacement equity, with closing expected in the second half of PANWโ€™s fiscal 2026 (ending July 31). Chronosphere brings a next-generation observability architecture and telemetry pipeline built for scale and cost control. Together, they aim to turn observability from passive dashboards into autonomous, governed remediation that blends performance and security insights.
Tech News & Insight
Airbus Defence and Space has introduced Agnet Direct, a multi-mode extension to its 3GPP-based Agnet portfolio that keeps teams connected when commercial or private 4G/5G coverage is compromised. Agnet Direct has been validated within Franceโ€™s Rรฉseau Radio du Futur (RRF), the nationwide secure broadband network for domestic security and emergency services. The solution combines a smartphone running the Agnet application with a smart remote speaker microphone (RSM) to deliver resilient communications across four operational modes. Agnet integrates with existing TETRA and Tetrapol estates, enabling hybrid operations where radio users and smartphone users communicate across shared talkgroups.
Tech News & Insight
Reliance Jio has widened its Google AI bundle from a youth-focused offer to a network-wide benefit, signaling that AI services are becoming core to 5G monetization in India. Jio is extending a complimentary 18โ€‘month subscription to Googleโ€™s premium AI planโ€”marketed around access to Gemini 3โ€”to every Jio customer on an Unlimited 5G plan. The bundle centers on expanded access to Googleโ€™s latest Gemini experience, AIโ€‘assisted features in Gmail and Docs, 2 TB of cloud storage across Photos, Drive, and Gmail, video generation powered by Googleโ€™s Veo technology, NotebookLM at elevated limits, and developer tooling such as Gemini Code Assist and Gemini CLI.
Tech News & Insight
Nokia is restructuring to monetize the AI supercycle across fixed and mobile networks while tightening focus on profitable growth. The companyโ€™s new strategy concentrates on: accelerating in AI and cloud; leading the next era of mobile with AI-native networks and 6G; co-innovating with customers and partners; concentrating capital where it can differentiate; and unlocking sustainable, consistent returns. Nokia will move from four primary segments to two, with changes effective 1 January 2026. The company is targeting comparable operating profit of โ‚ฌ2.7 billion to โ‚ฌ3.2 billion by 2028.
Tech News & Insight
New performance data shows U.S. WISPs are getting faster, but lowโ€‘Earth orbit players like Starlink are advancing just as quicklyโ€”and the competitive gap in rural markets is narrowing. Based on Speedtest Intelligence data from Q1 2021 to Q2 2025, eight of the larger WISPsโ€”Starry, Resound Networks, Nextlink, Wisper Internet, Unwired Broadband, GeoLinks, Etheric Networks, and Rise Broadbandโ€”improved speeds, with download gains outpacing uploads. Starry led by a wide margin with a 202 Mbps median download in Q2 2025, followed by Resound at 99 Mbps and Nextlink at 68 Mbps; GeoLinks trailed at 23 Mbps. Crucially, only a minority of WISP users consistently achieve the FCCโ€™s 100/20 Mbps fixed broadband benchmark.
Tech News & Insight
A new impact study shows CTIA Wireless Foundationโ€™s Catalyst program has touched 30 million Americans since 2019, underscoring how mobile-first tools can scale social outcomes faster than traditional interventions. The Foundation has invested just over $1 million in unrestricted grants yet reports benefits to nearly one in 12 Americansโ€”evidence of the leverage that wireless distribution, app stores, messaging, and APIs can create when paired with practical problem-solving. More than 30 social entrepreneurs have received support through Catalyst, selected from over 800 applications across 46 states. For telecom leaders, the takeaway is clear: modest, well-targeted funding combined with mobile channels and carrier-grade networks can produce nonlinear impact, particularly in domains (public safety, health, mental health, road safety) where ubiquity and low friction matter more than heavy infrastructure.
Tech News & Insight
Orange is moving to commercialize direct-to-device satellite connectivity in Europe with a carrier-branded SMS service that extends coverage beyond terrestrial reach. Orange will launch โ€œMessage Satellite,โ€ an SMS and location-sharing service that lets smartphones connect directly to satellites when mobile or Wiโ€‘Fi coverage is unavailable. The consumer launch in mainland France is slated for 11 December 2025, with professional and enterprise availability following in 2026. At launch, the service will be offered to Orange 5G and 5G+ customers using Google Pixel 9 or Pixel 10 devices, with additional handsets expected over time. Pricing is set at โ‚ฌ5 per month after a sixโ€‘month free introductory period.
Tech News & Insight
Alphabetโ€™s Google will spend $40 billion to build three AI-focused data centers in Texas, signaling that power access and grid proximity now define hyperscale strategy more than any single technology feature. The build spans one campus in Armstrong County in the Texas Panhandle and two in Haskell County near Abilene, with investments running through 2027. Google expects the program to create thousands of construction and supplier jobs and hundreds of long-term operations roles, consistent with typical hyperscale staffing patterns. Texas offers relatively low-cost power, faster interconnection timelines, abundant land, and pro-investment policies, making it second only to Virginia in U.S. data center count.
Tech News & Insight
AT&T has activated EchoStarโ€™s 3.45 GHz spectrum across a massive swath of its macro network, delivering a step-change in speed and capacity that advances its 5G and fixed wireless agenda. AT&T has deployed the 3.45 GHz band on nearly 23,000 cell sites across the contiguous United States, touching more than 5,300 cities. Early field results point to up to 80% faster 5G download speeds in upgraded markets. The same spectrum injection is lifting AT&Tโ€™s fixed wireless access (FWA) product, Internet Air, with download speeds up by about 55%. Mid-band spectrum is the engine of 5G performance at scale.
Tech News & Insight
Ciscoโ€™s intent to acquire Seattle-based NeuralFabric signals a decisive shift toward practical, domain-specific AI that meets real-world constraints around data, compliance, and infrastructure. Cisco plans to acquire NeuralFabric, an enterprise AI platform focused on building small language models (SLMs) from proprietary data with deployment across SaaS and on-premises environments. By focusing on SLMs trained on enterprise data and deployable in hybrid environments, Cisco aims to shorten time-to-value while keeping control where it belongsโ€”inside the business. They reduce inference cost, improve latency, and can be deployed on-premises or at the edgeโ€”critical for sectors like telecom, financial services, and healthcare.

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