Wire 3 Hooks up Mount Dora to Their Florida Fiber Network
Wire 3, a Florida‑based ISP, has connected Mount Dora to its 100% fiber network, delivering symmetrical speeds up to 10 Gbps and a five‑year price lock for new subscribers. The rollout is part of a broader Lake County expansion in which the company has invested roughly $150 million across six municipalities, including Clermont and Leesburg. Wire 3, founded in 2021, now serves more than 50 communities statewide, positioning itself as a pure‑fiber alternative to legacy cable providers. The Mount Dora launch marks the first phase of construction zones that will open for sign‑ups via the company’s website.
Viettel to Bring Zero-Tap Mobile Authentication to Vietnam Subscribers
IPification and Viettel Telecom have agreed to launch a carrier‑based, zero‑tap mobile authentication service for Viettel’s 70 million subscribers in Vietnam. The solution uses SIM and network signals to verify users silently, eliminating passwords and SMS OTPs. A phased rollout will...
PODCAST: Show Daily 1 Fiber Connect 2026 News Roundup
Lightwave’s Broadband Pulse podcast delivered a daily roundup from the Fiber Connect 2026 tradeshow in Orlando, highlighting panel discussions on construction roadblocks and edge computing, as well as the Broadband Forum’s four BASe workshops. The podcast featured an interview with...
When Every Second Counts, Networks Must Not Fail
Malaysia is leveraging its robust 5G Standalone foundation to introduce mission‑critical networks (MCNs) that prioritize reliability over speed. Ericsson’s regional head Enrique Garcia explains MCNs deliver secure, always‑on voice, video and data for emergency services, utilities and transport, even under...
‘Airtel’s 5G Upgrade Does Not Violate Net Neutrality, Brings New Tech to India’
Bharti Airtel has introduced a 5G network‑slicing upgrade that creates a "Priority Postpaid" tier, promising higher capacity and faster service for select customers. Industry experts assert the technology is content‑agnostic and therefore does not breach India’s net‑neutrality rules. The rollout...
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Starlink Gets Greenlight in Uganda, Airtel Tests Direct-to-Cell
SpaceX’s Starlink has secured a provisional operating license from Uganda’s Communications Commission, obligating the company to set up a national gateway, register all devices and maintain a staffed local office. The agreement follows a memorandum of understanding signed with President...
Microchip Timing Module Supports AI Data Centre and 5G Synchronization
Microchip has launched the MD-990-0011-B plug‑in timing module, co‑developed with Intel for Xeon 6 SoC servers and virtualized RAN platforms. The module offers automatic source selection among GNSS, SyncE and PTP, delivering resilient synchronization for AI workloads, cloud services and 5G...
Bharti Airtel Becomes First Indian Telco to Launch 5G Network Slicing-Powered Service
Bharti Airtel has become the first Indian carrier to launch a 5G network‑slicing‑enabled "Priority Postpaid" service, offering consistent high‑speed connectivity even in congested venues. The offering is bundled with existing postpaid plans starting at ₹449 (~$5.4) per month and includes...
Fiber Connect 2026: AI Infrastructure Meets the Quantum Networking Era
At Fiber Connect 2026, industry leaders reframed fiber broadband as the nervous system of the emerging "thinking economy," linking it directly to AI infrastructure. Hyperscale firms such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta are spending roughly $370 billion annually on AI, with...
Vodafone Introduces Low-Latency DOCSIS on German Cable
Vodafone Deutschland is deploying Low‑Latency DOCSIS across its cable network, aiming to halve response times for real‑time applications during peak traffic. The rollout will reach roughly 12 million households by October 2026 and cover 45% of the network by that date, with...
Africa Congo Internet Exchange Becomes First Distributed IX in DRC
DE‑CIX has expanded the Africa Congo Internet Exchange (ACIX) with a new carrier‑neutral datacenter presence at OADC Texaf’s Kinshasa FIH1 facility, making ACIX the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s first distributed internet exchange. Operated under DE‑CIX‑as‑a‑Service for NGO Internet Pour Tous, the...
Ericsson, Net Feasa Deliver Maritime Connectivity with 4G, 5G, Agentic AI
Ericsson and Net Feasa have partnered to bring 4G/5G cellular networks and agentic AI to container vessels, delivering real‑time cargo visibility from departure to destination. The solution relies on Net Feasa’s Agentic Control Tower and Ericsson’s Radio System hardware, with low‑earth‑orbit satellites...
Kenya Gives Safaricom a 25-Year Lifeline Amid Vodacom Court Drama
Safaricom secured a 25‑year operating licence from Kenya’s Communications Authority, ending a two‑year temporary permit and cementing regulatory certainty as a court blocks the sale of a 15 billion‑shilling (US$1.6 bn) government stake to Vodacom. In Nigeria, the National Identity Number now...
South Africa Moves to Rewrite Telecom Law for Starlink, Marking a Continental Inflection Point for Satellite Internet
South Africa’s communications minister announced plans to amend the Electronic Communications Act to enable SpaceX’s Starlink to obtain a licence. The current law has blocked the LEO satellite service despite rising demand, and the proposed changes would make the country...
Es’hailSat Positions Satellite as the Backbone of Business Continuity
Es’hailSat is positioning its sovereign GEO satellite fleet and Tier‑4‑certified teleport as the core of business‑continuity solutions across the Middle East and North Africa. The operator highlights anti‑jamming capabilities, multi‑orbit partnerships—most notably with Telesat’s LEO constellation—and AI‑driven network automation to...
Vodafone Idea to Deploy 70000 New Sites in 12-18 Months
Vodafone Idea (VIL) announced plans to roll out 60,000‑70,000 new mobile sites across India within the next 12‑18 months, aiming to extend coverage to an additional 125 million users. The network expansion has already lifted its high‑speed broadband reach to millions...
'Worst Behind Us, Vodafone Idea Starting FY27 with a Clear Plan', Says CEO
Vodafone Idea (Vi) reaffirmed its ₹45,000 crore ($5.4 bn) network expansion plan for FY27‑FY29, aiming to accelerate capex after a modest FY26 spend of ₹8,700 crore ($1.05 bn). CEO Abhijit Kishore said the telco is confident of securing ₹25,000 crore ($3.0 bn) in funded debt and...
Forecast: D2D Revenues to Double YoY to 2030
Analysys Mason forecasts that Direct‑to‑Device (D2D) revenues will double year‑on‑year through 2030 as satellite connectivity becomes a core component of mobile networks. The surge follows a two‑thirds reduction in launch costs after SpaceX’s reusable booster debut in 2015, spurring a...
Vodafone Idea 5G Launches in More than 70 Cities in FY26
Vodafone Idea (Vi) has accelerated its 5G rollout, now covering 83 Indian cities in FY26, up from fewer than 10 cities at the end of FY25. The operator spent roughly ₹8,742 crore (about $1.05 billion) on capex to boost both 4G and...
Operators: Smart Communities Need More than Fiber, They Need Government Engagement
Fiber operators are embedding school‑only wireless networks into residential routers to give public‑school students automatic internet access, regardless of household subscriptions. In Lincoln, Nebraska, ALLO Communications built the system into every city router, allowing Chromebooks to connect instantly. Panelists at...
SpaceX Raises Starlink Prices Across Every Consumer Plan and Doubles the Cost of Standby Mode
SpaceX announced a $5‑$10 monthly increase on all U.S. Starlink consumer plans and doubled its Standby Mode fee from $5 to $10. The changes take effect immediately for new customers and from June 18 for existing subscribers. The move comes as...
Cosmote Telekom Accelerates Greece’s 5G Future with 300 Mbps Broadband and 65,000 Subscribers
Cosmote Telekom, in partnership with Ericsson, launched a 5G Standalone Fixed Wireless Access service in early 2025 that delivers up to 300 Mbps broadband across Greece’s rural and island communities. By the first quarter of 2026 the service attracted more than...
Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison Completes 40,000-Site Integration as AI Strategy Drives Revenue, ARPU, and Subscriber Growth
Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and Nokia completed a 40,000‑site network integration in just 12 months, establishing a new benchmark for telecom modernization. The rapid rollout, driven by AI‑powered automation, boosted spectrum efficiency and service quality for roughly 94 million subscribers. In Q1 2026...
Telecom News: HFCL, Telin, DITO Telecommunity, Airtel Tanzania, Huawei
HFCL landed a $11 million optical‑fibre contract, slated for delivery by August 2026, underscoring its growing export footprint in telecom infrastructure. Telin and DITO Telecommunity signed a master services agreement to provide cross‑border connectivity and enterprise data services between Indonesia and the...
Midco and Switch Announce Historic 400G Connectivity Deal
Midco and Switch have sealed a five‑year, multistate agreement to deploy more than 500 individual 400 Gbps circuits between Ellendale, North Dakota and Chicago, delivering 200 Tbps of capacity with full path redundancy. The deal leverages Nokia’s optical networking technology and positions...
Teleste and Polystar Partner to Launch AI Automation for Next Generation Cable Infrastructure
Teleste Networks and Polystar have formed a strategic partnership to deliver a cloud‑native AI platform that automates analytics for next‑generation cable infrastructure. The joint solution taps Teleste’s distributed access hardware and Polystar’s Kalix automation engine to convert the flood of...
Gartner: How AI Will Transform Managed Network Services
By 2024, most leading managed network service providers have embedded AI across operations, from AIOps‑driven automation to generative AI assistants. Providers such as HCLTech, NTT Data and Tata Communications use machine‑learning models to predict failures, automate onboarding, and deliver proactive...
AT&T's Mass-Markets Chief: Consumers Aren't 'Chomping at the Bit for 6G'
AT&T’s mass‑markets chief Jenifer Robertson said the carrier’s future hinges on a fiber‑first strategy, targeting 60 million fiber‑served homes and businesses by 2030. The plan includes retiring the copper network by that year while supplementing gaps with the Internet Air fixed‑wireless...
O2 Germany's Public Cloud Migration Begins in Earnest
During Q1, Telefónica Germany moved its 4G/5G voice services for the first 100,000 customers to a cloud‑native IMS hosted on Amazon Web Services, making it the first European operator to run a voice core in a public cloud. The solution,...
Zayo Europe Opens Genoa Fibre Network Landing, Interconnection Hub
Zayo Europe has opened a new point of presence in Genoa, Italy, at Quadrivium Digital’s QGEN01 facility, extending its Southern European fiber network. The Genoa hub connects emerging Mediterranean subsea traffic to Zayo’s 400G‑enabled terrestrial backbone, offering routes to Frankfurt,...
Former EE Boss Mourns UK Passing of Huawei and 5G Failures
Former EE chief Olaf Swantee praised Huawei’s rapid fault‑fixing and technical edge, recalling that the Chinese vendor once supplied roughly two‑thirds of EE’s network. He lamented the UK ban that forces removal of Huawei gear from 5G sites by the end...
South Africa’s Mobile Spectrum Plan
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) is drafting a Long‑Term Spectrum Outlook covering the next 10‑20 years, outlining regulatory, technical and economic considerations for mobile spectrum allocation. The plan will be released for stakeholder feedback, but parliamentary members...
Forget Cellular Data: China’s Telecoms Giants Are Selling AI Token Plans
China Telecom has launched nationwide AI token subscription plans, pricing the service in units called tokens rather than traditional data. Consumer packages begin at ¥9.9 (≈$1.45) for 10 million tokens, while business tiers reach ¥299.9 (≈$44) for 250 million tokens, bundling access...
Netceed: Enabling Infrastructure Growth in the Middle East Through Global Scale and Local Execution
Netceed, a global infrastructure supply‑chain platform with 30 years of experience, is targeting the Middle East’s rapid digital‑infrastructure expansion. Leveraging a catalog of 90,000 products from roughly 1,500 suppliers and a presence in 21 countries, the firm pairs global scale...
Gulf Telecom Operators Boost Wi-Fi 7, Mesh Networks and FTTR as Poor Router Placement Cuts Home Broadband Speeds by Up...
Telecom operators across the Gulf are ramping up investments in Wi‑Fi 7 gateways, mesh networking and Fiber‑to‑the‑Room (FTTR) after Ookla’s Speedtest data showed that poor router placement can slash indoor broadband speeds by up to 50 %. The study, covering October 2025‑February 2026, confirmed...
Telecom Networks Reclaim Strategic Value in the AI Era: 10 Trends Driving $8 Bn GPUaaS Opportunity
Artificial intelligence is forcing telecom operators to move beyond pure connectivity into AI‑centric infrastructure, including sovereign cloud, edge computing, and GPU‑as‑a‑service (GPUaaS). Omdia projects that by 2030 the sector could generate roughly $8 billion in GPUaaS revenue, driven by more than...
Fiber Connect 2026: Beyond Deployment
The Fiber Broadband Association’s Fiber Connect conference in Orlando drew over 5,000 attendees, marking a sixth straight year of record participation. The association reported that 46 million U.S. homes now have fiber, with a further 60 million slated for connection within five...
Swedish Software Firm and AT&T Lead Open Access Standards Push in U.S.
AT&T and Swedish software firm COS Systems are co‑leading the Open Access Network Forum (OANF) within ATIS to create unified standards for open‑access fiber in the United States. The effort targets the costly, bespoke integration of billing and provisioning systems...
Subsea Cables Are Emerging as the New Underwater Battleground — These Are the Island Nations Most at Risk From Attacks
Undersea internet cables are increasingly viewed as strategic military assets, with a new report showing all 48 island nations rely on just 126 cables, many of which lack redundancy. The risk ranking highlights Iceland, Brunei and Bahrain as the most...
West Bengal Adopts Centre’s Telecom RoW Rules, Scraps 2023 State Guidelines
West Bengal has adopted the Centre’s Telecommunications (Right of Way) Rules, 2024, effective from 1 January 2025, and simultaneously withdrawn its 2023 state‑specific telecom infrastructure guidelines. The notification requires all state departments, statutory bodies and parastatals to follow the national framework for...
World Telecom Day 2026: Resilient Networks to Drive India’s Digital Future in AI Age, Say Executives
On World Telecom Day 2026, Indian telecom leaders stressed that AI‑resilient, intelligent networks are essential for the country’s rapidly expanding digital economy. Executives from COAI, the Indian Space Association, Nokia and other firms highlighted the need for robust terrestrial and...
Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Vodafone Idea: Data Usage Trends and ARPU Reported in Q4FY26
Indian private telecoms Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea released Q4FY26 results, highlighting divergent data‑usage patterns and ARPU shifts. Airtel logged 31.4 GB per user monthly with an ARPU of Rs 257 ($3.10), a slight dip from the prior quarter. Jio...
Red Hat Dials in on Telco Cloud Modernization as Legacy Pressure Mounts
Red Hat is pushing OpenShift Virtualization as a unified platform to accelerate telco cloud modernization, addressing legacy silos and the rapid rollout of 5G, 6G and edge AI. The company highlighted a New Zealand Group case where workload deployment speed improved by...
Bezeq Telecom Deploys Subsea Internet Cable
Bezeq Israel Telecom has launched a $172 million subsea cable project to create a high‑speed link between Europe and Asia via Israel. The 400‑terabyte capacity system will be deployed over two years, with a European partner to be announced soon and...
Airtel Says 5G Network Is Fully SA Ready, FWA Already Runs on Standalone 5G
Bharti Airtel announced that its 5G network is now fully standalone (SA) ready, with its fixed wireless access (FWA) service already operating on the SA architecture. While mobile users will be migrated to SA 5G in phases, the company highlighted...
‘We Did Not Compromise’: Northern Mariana Islands Advances Fully Underground Fiber Buildout
The Northern Mariana Islands signed a four‑year agreement to construct a fully underground, climate‑hardened fiber‑optic network that will reach every resident, business and anchor institution. The build is financed by a $31 million federal BEAD grant matched by nearly $22 million in...
China Telecom Advances ALC Landing in Hong Kong
China Telecom successfully landed the 6,200‑kilometer Asia Link Cable (ALC) at Hong Kong's Chung Hom Kok station on May 14, 2026. The system, co‑developed with 13 regional operators, offers more than 325 terabits per second of capacity and will become...
Beyond the Cable: How ISPs Can Better Monetize Networks
Cisco senior business development manager Robin Olds told Broadband Communities that ISPs must move beyond speed‑only pricing. He advocated tiered quality‑of‑service plans, network slicing, and performance‑lane offerings to monetize latency, jitter and packet loss. Olds also highlighted AI edge services...
Companies Say They Can Track Starlink Users. Should the Government Be Worried?
A trio of firms—TechTarget, Rayzone and Shoghi—are marketing software that can locate and identify Starlink satellite terminals for government customers. The tools rely on publicly available data sources rather than direct access to SpaceX systems, raising privacy and security concerns...
Rogers Keepy-Ups 5G Game for FIFA World Cup
Rogers Communications is bolstering its 5G network for the upcoming FIFA World Cup, allocating CAD5 million ($3.6 million) to upgrades in Vancouver and planning CAD22 million ($15.9 million) for Toronto. The upgrades cover the BP Place stadium, fan zones, hotels and key transport hubs...