Did we have it wrong when we said some things were “too big to fail”? The flood of network/Internet problems that have cropped up, including the recent Verizon mobile outage raise, in the minds of some enterprises and consumers, and even some telcos, whether networking is getting too big to succeed. One enterprise network planner…
We need big ideas in tech. That’s not only the conclusion of almost 500 enterprises who commented last year, it’s also what I heard from my vendor and telecom contacts. The tech booms of the past came about because we had a successful “big idea”, and everyone would really like to see another tech boom….
I’ve used the term “unit value of labor” a lot in my blogs, because I’ve found it central to understanding the goals of automation in general and AI in particular. I find that most people who see the term have a pretty good idea of what it means, which is (roughly speaking) the cost of…
5G is getting more bad press, and 6G is generating more doubts. This raises two questions. First, what impact will this have on operator plans in 2026? Second, what impact will it have on vendors who hope to sell into telco infrastructure? Let’s try to address both. To start with, I’m not going to suggest…
What’s our window on our tech-centric world? We know what it is today; the smartphone. Will that be true in three, five, ten years? Elon Musk, for what it’s worth, says that smartphones will be gone in 5 or 6 years, replaced (he thinks) by direct AI links to the brain or advanced wearables. Enterprises…
What will drive the security space in 2026? That’s a question really important to network vendors, but what will replace it may be a question even more important. Security, after all, has been a revenue and profit bright spot for vendors for over a decade, and that seems to be coming to an end. The…
The most important pieces of network infrastructure are access and metro. There are three major access questions in that space that 2026 may answer. First is how far fiber can go. Second is the impact of FWA, and finally there’s the impact of satellite. In the metro area, there’s really only one question, but all…
We’re entering a new year, and for telecom that raises the question of whether “open” initiatives might finally take hold. As we ended 2025, it was clear to most that Open RAN was not going to succeed, so it’s fair to ask whether the problems that it faced would confound other initiatives as well. Would…
As we move into 2026, one of the biggest questions in AI isn’t about language models, but about robotics. How much of the value of AI, particularly the notion of generalized intelligence, depends on being able to link our AI entity to a generalized automated entity, a robot? I’ve blogged on things related to this…
AI, like all too many tech terms, is a tent that’s admitted way too many into its shelter. Could this be why IBM’s CEO, Arvind Krishna, recently said that while there is no AI bubble, he also says that “It’s my view that there’s no way you’re going to get a return on that because…