Optical Interconnect Firm Lightelligence Seeks IPO
Lightelligence, a Shanghai‑based optical interconnect and computing specialist, has filed a prospectus for a Hong Kong IPO, becoming the first pure‑play optical firm to join China’s recent AI‑focused public‑market surge. The company reported full‑year revenue of about $15.5 million, with sales tripling over the past two years, and previously raised $43.9 million at a $1.14 billion valuation. Its flagship product links GPU clusters via optical interconnect, promising lower latency and higher throughput for large‑language‑model training. Analysts expect China’s optical interconnect market to double annually, potentially reaching $25 billion within five years.
Starlink 'Carving Out a Niche' In Urban US – Ookla
Ookla’s Speedtest data for the second half of 2025 shows Starlink shedding its rural‑only image, with five states—Florida, Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Jersey and Connecticut—recording more urban than rural subscribers. At the same time, the share of Starlink users achieving the...
Samsung Networks Boss Wonders if AI-RAN Is Too Hot to Handle
Samsung Networks CEO Woojune Kim warned that Nvidia‑style GPUs run so hot they could "cook a steak," raising doubts about their suitability for AI‑enabled radio access networks (AI‑RAN). He argued that RAN hardware must become cheaper and low‑power, a market...
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India's Tejas Eyes 5G Turnaround at Home and Abroad
India's Tejas Networks surged 361% to about $960 million after delivering 340,000 4G radios for state‑run BSNL, then saw sales tumble 89% to $83 million as the contract ended. The company now eyes a 5G upgrade for roughly 40% of BSNL’s 100,000...
FCC Suspends Seven for 'Schemes to Defraud' E-Rate Program
The Federal Communications Commission announced the suspension of seven individuals for fraudulent activities in the E‑Rate program, a component of the Universal Service Fund that subsidizes broadband for schools and libraries. The defendants were involved in schemes ranging from overbilling...
EdgeBeam Keeps Its First Acquisition in the Family
EdgeBeam Wireless, a broadcaster‑backed joint venture, has acquired Broadspan from Sinclair Broadcasting, adding a full control and data plane to its hybrid ATSC 3.0 and 4G network. Sinclair will keep exclusive international distribution rights to EdgeBeam’s software platform under a separate...
FCC Seeks Comment on Communications Marketplace Competition
The Federal Communications Commission has issued a public notice inviting industry stakeholders and the public to comment on its 2026 Communications Marketplace Report, which evaluates competition across fixed broadband, mobile wireless, satellite, and cross‑platform services. The solicitation emphasizes convergence among...
SBA Communications Is on the Block – Report
SBA Communications, owner of over 44,000 tower and small‑cell sites, is evaluating a sale after Bloomberg reported preliminary interest from large infrastructure funds. The company’s enterprise value is estimated at roughly $37 billion, debt included. The news sparked an 18 % surge...
AT&T CTO Casts Doubt on AI Compute at the Far Edge
AT&T’s chief technology officer, Yigal Elbaz, expressed skepticism about deploying AI compute at the far edge of the network, arguing that existing data‑center capacity and AT&T’s fiber and wireless backbone already deliver sufficient latency performance. He highlighted the $650 billion U.S....
India's Vodafone Idea and BSNL Eye Infrastructure Sharing to Stay Competitive
India’s Vodafone Idea and state‑run BSNL are negotiating active infrastructure sharing, including towers, fiber and potentially the 900 MHz spectrum. The government, which owns roughly 49 % of Vodafone Idea after multiple bailouts, is facilitating the talks to strengthen a third telco...
The Buildout: Comporium Grows Reach in Rural South Carolina
Comporium announced a $7.8 million fiber build funded by the American Rescue Plan Act, extending 138 miles to serve 1,255 locations across rural South Carolina counties and adding public Wi‑Fi at Cada Park in Chesnee. The rollout mirrors a wave of investments...
T-Mobile Defends Ads After Verizon Wins Injunction
Verizon obtained a federal preliminary injunction forcing T‑Mobile to pull ads claiming consumers can save over $1,000 annually by switching to its “Better Value” plan. T‑Mobile rejected the ruling, asserting its advertising is accurate and backed by HarrisX market research,...
How KDDI Allowed a $1.6B Fraud Scheme to Go Unchecked
KDDI disclosed a seven‑year fraud that erased ¥49.9 billion (≈$320 million) of operating profit after fake advertising transactions totaling ¥246.1 billion (≈$1.55 billion) were uncovered at its Biglobe and G‑Plan subsidiaries. The scheme, driven by circular pre‑payments, involved ¥32.9 billion (≈$207.6 million) being transferred outside the...
BDx Locks in $320M Loan to Advance Data Center Projects in Indonesia
BDx Data Centers has secured a $320 million loan from a consortium of Indonesian banks to fund its AI‑focused data‑center campuses in Jakarta. The financing will expand liquid‑cooling infrastructure and boost high‑voltage grid capacity to 1.2 GVA at the CGK4 and CGK5...
Comcast Is Vistance Networks' Top Customer… by a Lot
Vistance Networks, now owned by Amphenol, disclosed that Comcast accounted for about 35% of its 2025 revenue, up from 21% in 2024, making it the company’s dominant customer. Aurora Networks, Vistance’s cable‑access arm, saw revenue climb 47% to $1.2 billion, driven...
C-DOT Eyes Spinoff to Take Indian Tech Global
India’s Center for Development of Telecom (C‑DOT) is preparing to spin off a commercial arm, giving private investors a 51 % stake while the agency retains 49 %. The move aims to bypass government tendering constraints and accelerate the global rollout of...
Eurobites: CityFibre Hopes for Trenches without Tailbacks
CityFibre will pilot BUKO Digital’s traffic‑management system in Worthing, using satellite‑navigation interception and social‑media alerts to smooth trench‑digging and cable‑laying during a ten‑day road closure. The trial aligns with a local‑authority scheme that rewards minimal disruption. Meanwhile, Spanish tower operator...
Deadline for Simba Telecom's M1 Acquisition Pushed Back
Keppel and Simba Telecom have agreed to push back the long‑stop date for Simba's acquisition of M1's telecom business to May 21 2026, after the Infocomm Media Development Authority extended its regulatory review. The transaction, announced in August 2025, values M1's enterprise...
India Can't Let BSNL Fail but It Seems Incapable of a Turnaround
India’s state‑run telecom operator BSNL has absorbed three government‑funded revival packages totaling roughly $38 billion yet remains loss‑making, with its wireless market share slipping to 7.44% in January 2026. The latest 4G rollout, delayed by an indigenous‑technology mandate, arrived only last year...
Comcast's DOCSIS 4.0 Deployment Now Covers 'Millions' Of Homes
Comcast announced that its DOCSIS 4.0 rollout now serves "millions" of homes, expanding far beyond the ten markets and roughly one‑million premises covered in 2024. The carrier has installed about 225,000 digital nodes and 300,000 full‑duplex amplifiers, many of which are...
Eurobites: Vodafone Claims Irish First with Satellite Video Call
Vodafone Ireland completed Ireland’s first mobile video call routed through an AST SpaceMobile satellite using a regular smartphone, showcasing a sovereign‑network alternative to Starlink. Meanwhile, KKR and Global Infrastructure Partners have tabled bids of €6‑8 bn (≈$6.9‑$9.2 bn) for Patrick Drahi’s XpFibre...
Nokia Is Cutting Thousands More Jobs This Year
Nokia announced it will cut roughly 4,100 jobs this year, aiming to shrink its workforce to about 70,000 and save €1.2 bn (≈$1.4 bn) in personnel costs. The cuts follow a steep decline in 5G spending, which fell from $45 bn in 2022...
The Bright Spot in the Family Budget
Since 2017, most household expenses have surged—groceries up 32%, electricity 45%, car insurance nearly doubled—yet wireless services have become cheaper. The BLS wireless telephone services index fell 10.4% from 51.7 in Q1 2017 to 46.3 in Q3 2025, delivering faster data and...
AT&T, Ericsson Call for 5G Network Security Rethink
AT&T and Ericsson have released a joint security blueprint that outlines how 5G networks—and the forthcoming 6G era—should be protected against AI‑driven threats, open‑architecture risks, and future quantum attacks. The paper advocates a collective, ecosystem‑wide approach, urging vendors, operators and...
US Cable Mobile Net Adds Hold Steady Again in Q4
US cable operators led by Charter, Comcast and Optimum held about 33% of mobile‑phone net additions in Q4 2025, adding 830,000 lines—virtually unchanged from a year earlier. Their share of post‑paid gross adds remained at 14.5%, far below the Big Three...
Eurobites: Poste Italiane Proffers €10.8B Bid for Telecom Italia
Poste Italiane has submitted a €10.8 billion offer to acquire Telecom Italia, Italy’s largest fixed‑line operator. The postal group already controls 27.3% of TIM after buying shares from former major shareholder Vivendi. TIM’s fixed‑line network has already been sold to a...
Ericsson Bets on Steady Growth in India Following 5G Rollout
Ericsson anticipates steady, incremental growth in India as the country moves from rapid 5G rollout to ongoing network upgrades. While coverage now exceeds 90% of the population, the vendor’s share of regional sales fell from 20% in 2023 to 12%...
Why Auction-Led Spectrum Policy Has Failed India
India’s telecom regulator TRAI has proposed cutting spectrum reserve prices by up to 40 % for the upcoming auction, setting a total reserve price of 2.1 trillion rupees for more than 11,700 MHz across nine bands. Past auctions have left most spectrum unsold...
Dish Wireless Wants to Consolidate Deluge of Tower Lawsuits
Dish Wireless is petitioning a Colorado federal court for a stay and consolidation of more than a dozen lawsuits filed by tower owners over unpaid infrastructure fees. The company has moved to centralize seven federal actions and several state cases...
The Buildout: Spectrum, Altafiber Make Moves in Ohio
Spectrum announced a $100 million fiber build in western Ohio, aiming to connect over 20,000 homes and businesses across 11 counties by the end of 2026. The rollout is funded by private capital, the Ohio Residential Broadband Expansion Grant, and the...
Plume Lands Deal with Vietnam's FPT Telecom
Plume announced a strategic partnership with Vietnam’s FPT Telecom to bring its AI‑driven Plume Platform to the carrier’s broadband customers. The platform will deliver continuous Wi‑Fi optimization, application‑aware prioritization and cloud‑based security across home networks. Powered by machine‑learning from tens...
No Magic Bullet Will Solve the Upper C-Band
The FCC will auction 100‑180 MHz of upper C‑band spectrum by July 2027, forcing broadcasters to vacate a band that currently underpins U.S. video distribution and supports emerging 5G/6G services. Industry leaders warn that no single technology can replace the band’s five‑nines...
Eurobites: Orange Offers 'Sovereign' Collab Tools to Hedge Against Hyperscaler Lock-In
Orange has launched Live Collaboration, a sovereign suite of workplace tools built from European vendors and hosted on its Grenoble‑based Cloud Avenue SecNum data centre. The platform is designed to free enterprises from US hyperscaler lock‑in, lowering geopolitical and supply‑chain...
Nokia Rebuilds Its Optical Engine, One Building Block at a Time
Nokia’s $2.3 billion acquisition of Infinera is bearing fruit as the company unveils a modular "building‑block" optical engine featuring four new DSPs and interchangeable indium‑phosphide, silicon‑photonic, and lithium‑niobate front ends. The approach lets customers mix and match components to serve 13...
Reliance Jio Boss Has Picked an AI Fight He Must Win
Mathew Oommen, CEO of Jio Platforms, told MWC Barcelona that telecom operators must shift from charging per gigabyte to monetising AI tokens, positioning Jio as a large token‑value generator. Jio posted a $2.4 billion net profit for the first nine months...
OpenROADM Touts Multi-Operator Support
At OFC 2026, the IOWN Global Forum and OpenROADM demoed a multi‑domain, multi‑operator photonic fabric built on the OpenROADM Multi‑Source Agreement. The showcase integrated ROADMs, transponders and switches from four vendors (1Finity, Ciena, NEC, Nokia) and was controlled by the open‑source...
Hyper Photonix Showcases 1.6T SiP Optical Transceivers at OFC 2026
Hyper Photonix unveiled a 1.6 Tbps silicon‑photonic (SiP) optical transceiver line built on a 200 G per lane architecture at OFC 2026, targeting AI‑driven data‑center traffic. Live demos at booth 449 highlighted the module’s high bandwidth, power efficiency, signal integrity and thermal robustness. The...
Verizon's Reporting Changes 'Investor Unfriendly' – Analyst
Verizon will overhaul its financial reporting starting Q1 2026, breaking revenue into mobility‑broadband, wireless equipment, and other streams for both consumer and business units. The change follows CEO Dan Schulman's "full reboot" and a 13,000‑person workforce reduction. Analyst Brandon Nispel of...
Elisa Praises Placing Cybersecurity at Heart of Operations
Elisa, Finland's incumbent telco, consolidated its cybersecurity and service operations into a hybrid cSOC in 2011, merging monitoring and response functions. The integrated centre now watches services from the customer perspective, automatically rectifying deviations and involving engineers only when needed....
Eurobites: Telia Piggybacks on Brookfield for Sovereign AI Push in Sweden
Swedish telecom operator Telia has partnered with Canadian infrastructure firm Brookfield to deliver sovereign AI services. The deal connects Brookfield’s planned AI‑focused data centres to Telia’s nationwide fibre network, with Telia’s Cygate unit operating a secure centre within the facilities....
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Eurobites: Vodafone Offers 'Speed Boost' Add-On to Data Guzzlers on the Go
Vodafone UK introduced a £3‑£10 "Speed Boost" add‑on that temporarily doubles mobile download speeds by prioritising data, a move seen as early monetisation of 5G network‑slicing capabilities. In France, FTTH roll‑out slowed sharply in Q4 2025, adding only 395,000 homes –...
Helios Towers Powers Ahead for Another Five Years
Helios Towers unveiled its five‑year IMPACT 2030 strategy, targeting a tenancy ratio above 2.5× by 2030 after already surpassing the 2.2× goal in 2025. The towerco now operates 14,746 sites across eight African markets and Oman, with adjusted EBITDA projected at...
Eurobites: Openreach Trials Fiber-Based Leak-Detection System
Openreach’s three‑month trial of a distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) system turned its fibre‑broadband network into a leak‑detection array, preventing the loss of 2 megalitres of water. In parallel, Antevia Networks partnered with Benetel to deliver a plug‑and‑play outdoor private‑5G solution for...
SK Telecom Wants to Export the Sovereign AI Playbook
SK Telecom is building a 1 GW AI data‑center campus in Ulsan, positioning itself as a sovereign AI partner that combines telecom connectivity, SK Group’s semiconductor strength and full‑stack AI services. The operator is leveraging SK Hynix memory chips and partnerships...
China Designates Satellite Broadband as Top Priority
China’s premier Li Qiang has elevated satellite broadband to a national priority, placing it alongside semiconductors and cloud‑computing in the government work report. The National Development and Reform Commission will treat satellite Internet as a "large‑scale major project," unlocking hundreds...
Intel Rules Out RAN Exit and Champions Granite Rapids over Nvidia
Intel confirmed it will not spin off its Network and Edge (NEX) unit, reaffirming its commitment to the 5G/6G RAN market with the Granite Rapids processor. The decision follows a $7 billion funding infusion from Nvidia and SoftBank that helped the...
A New Fiber Giant Takes Shape as GFiber and Astound Combine
Google Fiber (GFiber) and Stonepeak-backed Astound Broadband announced a merger that will create a new, independent fiber provider. Stonepeak will hold a majority stake while Alphabet remains a significant minority shareholder. The combined entity, led by GFiber's current executive team,...
Lightpath Streamlines Access to Federal Agency Deals
Lightpath has secured a General Services Administration Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) contract, enabling federal agencies to procure its AI‑grade fiber infrastructure through the GSA eBuy platform. The agreement also extends to state, local, and education (SLED) agencies via cooperative purchasing,...
AT&T Keys on Subscriber Penetration, Convergence in Lumen Markets
AT&T has closed its purchase of Lumen’s fiber assets, adding over four million fiber passings in under‑penetrated markets such as Denver, Las Vegas and Phoenix. The acquired network currently serves about one million subscribers, roughly a 25% penetration rate versus AT&T’s...
WISPA Raises Interference Concerns About SpaceX's Mega Constellation
SpaceX has filed an FCC application for a mega‑constellation of up to one million low‑Earth‑orbit satellites that would host space‑based AI data centers. The system would operate in the 18.8‑19.3 GHz (space‑to‑Earth) and 28.6‑29.1 GHz (Earth‑to‑space) bands, relying on narrow‑beam optical links....
