Can broadband networks be made both populist and profitable? What constraints on technology and capability exist in meeting that goal? Obviously this is one of those things that require a balance between the characteristics of a service and the cost, that balance being impacted by the distribution of the service users and thus the efficiency…
The cost of network infrastructure, both capex and opex, directly relates to the architectural policies established in the deployment of network elements. Operators agree with an obvious point, which is that you can reduce both if you reduce the number of devices in the network. They also agree that you can “flatten” a network to…
Could it be that the telcos made a fatal mistake back in the 1990s? Could their ability to continue to operate in the future without some form of subsidization or return to public utility status now depend on an almost-impossible retro-decision? Is it already too late to get things right, because they (and we in…
How do companies justify tech projects? That’s a question that often comes up in stories, social media, and other forums. There are a lot of views, because the topic isn’t exactly cut and dried, and because different constituencies have different answers; vendors and users, meaning sellers and buyers, investors and employees, and so forth. I’ve…
Like all tech, 5G and 6G have followed the “all-to-positive-to-absolutely-negative” PR path. I’ve arguably been on the negative side of the middle ground for both, from the first, and that’s likely the closest thing to a default right assessment we could give anything new in tech. AI? Quantum computing? They could both expect the “G’s”…
How do we come to terms with AI? Where do we find helpful information, who can we trust, what should we look for, will it meet ROI requirements, should we apply special compliance rules to it? There are a lot of questions enterprises have, and the one constant is that of almost 400 enterprises who…
There’s now, and then there’s “then”. Most of you can probably recall when to make a success of a broadband service, you had to have linear video delivery. Video killed the radio star, so the song goes, but it made broadband possible…then. Now, linear video may be an albatross, and that comes straight from confidential…
Why would companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft want to invest so much in AI infrastructure? Wall Street looks at the rise in capex as a threat to future profits. Many, myself included, wonder whether all their AI hype has proved is that if you give something away, people will take it. So, do these…
The recent Starlink service outage has raised yet again the issue of software failures in network outages. While over 80% of enterprises and slightly under two-thirds of operators say the largest source of outage-minutes in their networks is human error, most of these will admit that there’s an underlying question of whether software should have…
The biggest problem with AI agents, say enterprises, is that all you can easily find about them is trivial and wrong. Yes, it’s possible to infer some useful truths from basic agentic comments online, but the details that a savvy planner would need to make agent decisions and deployments is missing. One AI type told…