As the world grows more connected and more complicated, we all need ways of defining, identifying and keeping track of things and cross-referencing them with their owners. The simplest way to do that is with registries -- everything from the Domesday Book, a medieval registry of land, property and people; to current-day auto registries on the one hand and the worldwide Domain Name System on the other...But now, companies and organizations have to keep track of ever more things and people, not just inside their walls but across extended organizational boundaries. Call this new wrinkle an "external registry". Finally, they may want to interact with things and people, rather than just look them up, via an "active registry". more
The NANOG 95 conference spotlighted breakthroughs in fibre optics, wireless technology, routing security, and quantum computing, offering a forward-looking assessment of internet infrastructure and its vulnerabilities, as reported by APNIC's Geoff Huston. more
A bipartisan Senate bill seeks to strengthen U.S. oversight and global coordination to protect undersea fiber-optic cables, vital infrastructure increasingly targeted by geopolitical adversaries, natural disasters, and cyber or physical sabotage. more
Global eSIM connections are projected to reach 4.9 billion by 2030, driven by China's rapid adoption, new provisioning standards, and growing demand across smartphones, industrial devices, and the expanding Internet of Things ecosystem. more
Verizon and AWS have deepened their collaboration to build dedicated fiber infrastructure, addressing the growing need for low-latency, high-capacity connectivity to support the rapid expansion of enterprise-scale artificial intelligence workloads. more
While Starlink dominates the low-Earth orbit internet race, rivals like OneWeb, Telesat, Amazon's Project Kuiper, and Europe's IRIS² are slowly building capacity, buoyed by geopolitical necessity, state support, and commercial partnerships. more
There was a recent article in the Wall Street Journal that noted that the business world still uses a lot of landline telephones. Landline telephones have been steadily disappearing from homes, but are still not gone. I see ISPs still selling a telephone line to 10% or more of passings, and surveys show that the average residential landline penetration rate is still somewhere between 15% and 20%. more
A smartphone smuggled out of North Korea has revealed the alarming extent of digital surveillance enforced by the Kim regime. Though it resembles a modern Android device, the software within tells a darker story: every five minutes, the phone covertly captures screenshots, storing them in an inaccessible folder for later state inspection. more
NVIDIA recently issued its third annual State of AI in Telecommunications report. The company manufactures many of the cards used in AI data centers, so the company is clearly focused on AI adoption. NVIDIA issues similar reports for other industries. The 2025 report is the result of a survey that NVIDIA administered to 450 telecom professionals across the globe. more
American officials have revealed an ongoing struggle to expel Chinese hackers from telecommunications networks, months after the espionage was first discovered. The campaign, attributed to a group called "Salt Typhoon," has infiltrated major telecom carriers, particularly in the Washington region. more
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is embarking on an ambitious $10 billion project to construct a privately-owned, 40,000-kilometer subsea cable network. Dubbed the "mother of all submarine cables," this endeavor aims to bolster Meta's data infrastructure and sidestep geopolitical risks associated with traditional cable routes. more
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted T-Mobile and SpaceX approval to extend mobile coverage to remote areas using satellite technology. This marks the first authorization of its kind, allowing collaboration between a wireless carrier and a satellite operator to utilize spectrum bands traditionally reserved for terrestrial services. more
I recently saw that AT&T is offering a $10,000 reward to anybody who provides information that leads to the arrest and conviction of people stealing copper wiring. The particular announcement is related to a recent theft of copper in South Dallas, Texas, but there have been numerous other thefts. This is not a small problem, and the estimated value of stolen telephone copper is between $1.5 and $2 billion annually. more
T-Mobile has claimed a new world record in 5G upload speeds, achieving an impressive 2.2 Gbps in tests conducted at California's SoFi Stadium. Partnering with Ericsson and Qualcomm, the telecommunications firm leveraged an emerging technology, 5G Dual Connectivity (5G DC), which combines mid-band and millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum bands. more
In a joint statement to the European Commission's new tech appointee, Henna Virkkunen, a coalition of internet advocacy groups has firmly opposed recent proposals aimed at imposing network fees on content providers. more