T-Mobile

AST SpaceMobile is signaling a pivotal year ahead as it moves from demonstrations to commercial direct-to-device coverage with major operators and an aggressive launch schedule. The company’s plan to begin “intermittent nationwide” service in early 2026, followed by continuous coverage later in the year, is also a forcing function for device vendors, standards work, and MNO network integration. As AST scales to 45–60 BlueBird satellites by end-2026, pass frequency and overlap increase to support “continuous” service across the U.S., Europe, Japan, and other priority markets. AST reports over $3.2 billion in cash and liquidity.
SoftBank has exited Nvidia and is redirecting billions into AI platforms and infrastructure, signaling where it believes the next phase of value will concentrate. SoftBank sold its remaining 32.1 million Nvidia shares in October for approximately $5.83 billion, and also disclosed a separate $9.17 billion sale of T-Mobile US shares as part of a broader reallocation into artificial intelligence. The proceeds are earmarked for a significant expansion of SoftBank’s AI portfolio, including a major investment in OpenAI and potential participation in “Stargate,” a next-generation AI data center initiative co-developed by OpenAI and Oracle. Despite exiting Nvidia’s equity, SoftBank retains about 90% ownership of Arm.
October’s job-cut announcements surged, with AI and cost control reshaping staffing plans across technology and adjacent sectors. Planned layoffs spiked to roughly 153,000 in October, up more than 180% from September and about 175% from a year ago, according to the latest Challenger job-cuts tally. Year-to-date announcements for 2025 have crossed 1.09 million, the highest October-through-period since the pandemic shock of 2020 and above comparable 2009 levels. The cuts reflect a pivot from growth-at-any-cost to profitability, with AI rebalancing roles and budgets across the stack. Across reasons given, cost reduction led by a wide margin, and AI adoption was the second-largest driver, underscoring both macro pressure and structural transformation.
2025 has seen major telecom and tech M&A activity, including billion-dollar deals in fiber, AI, cloud, and cybersecurity. This monthly tracker details key acquisitions, like AT&T buying Lumen’s fiber assets and Google’s $32B move for Wiz, highlighting how consolidation is shaping the competitive landscape.
NVIDIA and Nokia unveiled a strategic partnership to deliver commercial AI-RAN products built on NVIDIA’s Aerial RAN Computer Pro (ARC-Pro) platform and Nokia’s RAN software portfolio, with NVIDIA committing a $1 billion equity investment in Nokia at approximately $6.01 per share, subject to customary closing conditions. The companies are targeting an AI-native RAN that runs both radio workloads and AI inference on a software-defined, accelerated platform, with a cumulative AI-RAN market opportunity that Omdia estimates will exceed $200 billion by 2030. ARC-Pro is positioned as a 6G-ready accelerated computing platform that couples connectivity, compute, and sensing, enabling upgrades from 5G-Advanced to 6G largely via software.
Verizon signed a commercial agreement with Eaton Fiber, an affiliate of Tillman Global Holdings, to extend fiber-to-the-premises service well beyond its current Fios footprint and the locations it expects to add through its planned Frontier deal. The structure is straightforward. Eaton Fiber will fund, build, and operate the local access network. Verizon will handle sales, marketing, and customer care and gain full residential retail exclusivity on the new builds during deployment and for a subsequent period. Fiber is the control point for converged services.
Germany’s largest operator is turning e-waste into engagement currency with a take-back drive that mixes material recovery with headline incentives. Deutsche Telekom estimates 195 million unused phones are sitting idle in Germany, locking up valuable materials and ESG progress. The company is reframing those devices as an urban mine—rich in gold, copper, and critical minerals—and as a lever to scale circularity ahead of its 2030 ambition to make all IT and network technology, and most end-user devices, recyclable or reusable. By the end of 2024, the operator had already taken back more than 11 million phones across the group.
Iridium and T-Mobile are scaling satellite-delivered positioning, navigation, and timing services under a U.S. Department of Transportation initiative to bolster the resilience of 5G networks against GPS disruptions. The collaboration equips T-Mobile sites with Iridium PNT receivers to deliver precise, authenticated timing that complements existing GNSS sources. Iridium transmits timing over its low-earth-orbit constellation in the L-band, offering weather-resilient coverage and stronger signals than typical GNSS. The service is engineered for sub-100-nanosecond accuracy, uses cryptographic protections for integrity, and can operate indoors without an external antenna, addressing urban canyons, indoor small cells, and hard-to-reach sites where GNSS is unreliable.
A planned merger between Lynk Global and Omnispace aims to fuse spectrum assets, satellite technology, and SES’s multi-orbit infrastructure to scale 3GPP-compliant direct-to-device services worldwide. The combined company will pair Omnispace’s globally coordinated S-band holdings, about 60 MHz anchored by ITU filings and aligned to non-terrestrial network standards—with Lynk’s patented multi-spectrum D2D platform. SES, already an investor in both firms, will become a major strategic shareholder and provide access to its GEO and MEO assets and ground network to improve coverage, resiliency, and time-to-market. Lynk has already launched commercial messaging and alerting in small markets with a handful of LEO spacecraft.
Mint Mobile is expanding from prepaid wireless into fixed wireless access, introducing a 5G home internet offer that targets price-sensitive households and small offices with unlimited data and headline speeds up to 415 Mbps for as low as $30 per month. The company’s “MINTernet” is a self-install 5G home internet service that rides on T-Mobile’s nationwide 5G network, following T-Mobile’s acquisition of Mint’s parent Ka’ena Corporation in 2024. At a starting price of $30 per month, Mint undercuts many cable and fiber entry tiers and lands below other national 5G FWA offers, which typically range from $35 to $60 depending on mobile bundle eligibility.
New usage data shows AT&T subscribers are tapping into T-Mobile’s Starlink-powered T-Satellite more than expected, signaling a rapid shift in how carriers and customers think about direct-to-device connectivity. Speedtest intelligence indicates T-Mobile users account for the majority of direct-to-device (D2D) connections to Starlink, roughly six in ten overall and more than seven in ten among devices reporting active service at connection time. The surprise is AT&T’s footprint: about a third of observed connections come from AT&T subscribers, while Verizon’s share is minimal.
T-Mobile US expanded its Advanced Network Solutions portfolio with Edge Control and T-Platform, aiming to deliver private network-like performance over its nationwide 5G-Advanced footprint while simplifying how enterprises deploy, govern, and scale edge workloads. Edge Control enables cellular traffic to exit locally and flow directly into an enterprise’s edge compute environment, rather than traversing centralized cores or the public internet. T-Platform is T-Mobile’s customer portal for managing business services, including Edge Control. Traditional MEC offers low-latency access to hyperscaler edge zones but often relies on internet or backhaul paths that add jitter and sovereignty concerns.

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