Long time Boingo Wireless executive Derek Peterson (pictured) revealed on LinkedIn he has joined AST SpaceMobile as CTO, Enterprise & Platforms while also leading the satellite player’s CIO and CSO functions.

Peterson was at Boingo Wireless for 15 years, most recently as CTO Emeritus and strategic advisor after serving as CTO, CIO, COO, CSO and CPO at the wireless company for over 14 years.

In his new role at AST, he will lead enterprise IT, platforms, infrastructure, corporate networks and cybersecurity, including the CIO and CSO functions, and building the US software team while driving Wi-Fi and OpenRoaming integration.

“Connecting a regular phone straight to a satellite is the piece that completes the convergence picture,” he stated on LinkedIn. “I’ve spent my career chasing seamless connectivity, and I’m excited to join an innovative team that’s building it from space

AST SpaceMobile previously projected 45 to 60 of its next-generation satellites would launch this year for its direct-to-device service but is now targeting having approximately 45 in orbit by early 2027.

The delay was revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission regulatory filing tied to a $1 billion notes offering and followed a serious setback to one of its two main launch partners.

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The National Basketball Association (NBA), Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) and AT&T revealed the launch of the fourth generation of the High-Speed Arena Network (HSAN), the latest iteration of the leagues’ connectivity platform built to transport live game content, highlights, replays, in-arena programming and stats to fans and business partners.

With more than 68,000 miles of the operator’s fibre and network infrastructure, the HSAN will be built to transport more than 118 concurrent, high-quality, low-latency streams per game, supporting millions of hours of basketball consumption during the 2027-28 NBA season.

AT&T chief marketing and growth officer Kellyn Smith Kenny stated fans consume basketball across live broadcasts, replays, highlights, social media and NBA digital platforms. She added the companies were building the connectivity needed to distribute game content quickly and reliably, helping viewers stay connected to key moments wherever they watch.

AT&T, the NBA and the WNBA also extended their longstanding marketing partnership, continuing the operator role as the leagues’ Official Connectivity Partner, building on a relationship which began in 2018. The extension also continues AT&T’s partnership with the NBA G League, USA Basketball and NBA Take-Two Media.

As part of the marketing partnership, AT&T and the NBA will create new fan touchpoints across content and retail activations and give them more opportunities to engage with NBA stars and AT&T athletes. The operator will also continue to connect fans with their favourite teams and players through its partnerships with the Chicago Bulls, Dallas Mavericks, Miami Heat and LA Clippers.

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Interview: Seven months after its launch at MWC Barcelona 2026, the Linux Foundation’s OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation has added major technology companies and issued the second version of its open-source RAN software.

Dr Tom Rondeau (pictured below), principal director of the US Department of War’s FutureG programme, told Mobile World Live the initiative is working to a six month release cadence. The first release arrived in April, followed by the second version on 8 October.

OCUDU, short for Open Centralised Unit Distributed Unit, hosts open-source software for the RAN’s central and distributed units.

When the foundation launched, its members included AMD, AT&T, Ericsson, Nokia, Nvidia, SoftBank Corp and Verizon. FutureG and the US National Spectrum Consortium agreed to back it for three years with funds to be appropriated by Congress.

April release
Rondeau said the April release was mainly a rebuild. Software Radio Systems (SRS) re-architected its RAN code base, which dates back to the LTE-era, so a wider open-source community could work on it. He noted much of the cybersecurity benefit comes from making the code readable and clean.

“What that included though, aside from just good coding practices, was a basic 5G RAN that you could stand up,” he said. “A fundamental 5G with no bells and whistles necessarily but you could make a call across it, and you could have a data connection usually from standard 5G UEs”.

“That was important just as a proof of concept to get the basic bones of a 5G system out there and get people looking at the code and working with it,” he added.

It also included a significant number of interfaces based both on 3GPP and O-RAN Alliance specifications.

Rondeau said feedback on the first release has been positive, with developers describing the code as easy to use, fast and well documented. He added people have been “coming out of the woodwork” to say they have used OCUDU successfully.

October release
The latest version focuses on radio performance, led by beamforming and more advanced multi-antenna support. It also added work on non-public networks, resilience upgrades, bug fixes and support for more powerful phased-array radio units.

Rondeau said developers have repeatedly asked whether OCUDU can support non-terrestrial networks (NTN). The October release incorporated the 3GPP’s Release 17 NTN specification, drawing on SRS’ experience in the area and giving developers a platform for exploring space-based communications.

Membership growth
Samsung joined as a premier member in April, followed by Qualcomm in May and Intel in August, taking the group to 12 premier members and 34 general ones.

The premier members sit on the governing board and help drive the roadmap. Day-to-day, though, most of the companies still build their own features or are integrating OCUDU with their own products or stacks.

Genuine collaborative development, Rondeau said, is “a cultural thing that needs to be continuously worked on”. He stated the Linux Foundation had told his department OCUDU was its third-fastest-growing project.

Roadmap
Rondeau said the organisation is striving for at “least one real champion” to say it has integrated OCUDU into its products and can use it in commercial release.

“A year from now may be a little bit early,” he acknowledged. Integration in prototypes or test facilities would count, and he has heard “good rumours” about companies moving aggressively on their own.

A separate contract with Cohere Technologies, awarded by Rondeau’s office, offers another test. The goal is to use OCUDU to set up a call over the standard 5G NR waveform, then negotiate a switch to another waveform for the data plane.

In Cohere’s case that is Zac-Orthogonal Time Frequency and Space (OTFS), which lets the department test sensing and communications together. It will be built around an OCUDU-based RAN stack, which Rondeau called a major proof of concept for Cohere and for OCUDU as the core software of a working RAN.

That contract runs for two years, with completion expected around the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and intermediate deliverables along the way. It will not be public in the way OCUDU is but Cohere has committed to releasing the interfaces back into the project.

The work also feeds into integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) which Rondeau sees as one leg of 6G alongside connectivity and edge AI compute.

Rondeau said sensing is critical to the US Department of War because it could close capability gaps and reduce the number of specialised sensors it needs to carry or deploy.

He added the US must compete with authoritarian adversaries which may take different approaches to how ISAC standards and technologies govern data management, security, processing and access.

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Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin outlined a plan to spend $330 million on extensive upgrades to its launch facilities in the US state of Florida to support multiple flights per week by the end of the decade. 

Blue Origin revealed it will add two additional launch and landing pads for its New Glenn rockets while also boosting its second stage manufacturing capabilities. Ian Richardson, Blue Origin’s SVP of operations, stated in a blog the expansion will be completed by the middle of 2027.

“These investments are centred on one goal: building the capacity to support more missions, more reliably, and more efficiently,” he said. “As we look ahead, this infrastructure is designed to support multiple flights per week by the end of the decade.”

The upgrades also include a new customer integration facility with the US Space Force at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida to give it “the ability to prepare multiple missions at once”.

Richardson noted the company has invested more than $3 billion in facilities and infrastructure across the state with more than 5,000 employees.

Blue Origin is seeking to ramp up the cadence of its rocket launches to better compete against Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Currently, Blue Origin has 396 LEO birds in orbit while SpaceX has approximately 11,150 Starlink satellites.

While SpaceX and Blue Origin use their rockets to launch satellites from other companies, CNBC reported the former has stopped commercial rides on its Falcon 9 rocket to support its larger Starship model.

Blue Origin suffered a setback in May when one of its New Glenn rockets exploded on the Florida launch pad. In July, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp outlined a plan to rebuild its launch pad with a new configuration as it works toward returning its New Glenn rocket to flight before the end of 2026.

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Mercedes-Benz expanded its partnership with Nvidia to develop driver assistance and automated driving systems based on the carmaker’s MB.OS platform and the chip company’s computing technology and software.

The agreement combines Mercedes-Benz engineering and its MB.OS operating system with Nvidia’s Hyperion computing and sensor architecture, Alpamayo driving software and Halos safety system.

Mercedes CTO Jorg Burzer hailed Nvidia as its “most important strategic partner in automated driving”, describing the urban point-to-point assistance system the two built as the first of its kind from Mercedes for Western markets.

He added the extension is a milestone built on years of mutual trust, while stressing customers will still expect the safety standards the brand is known for.

Ali Kani, VP of automotive at Nvidia, said accelerated computing could help vehicles interpret their surroundings and respond to complex driving situations. He added the companies aim to make autonomous driving suitable for everyday use.

MB.OS will manage driving functions and over-the-air updates alongside Nvidia’s Hyperion in-vehicle computing platform. Alpamayo will provide software for urban point-to-point assistance, active safety and automated parking, while Halos will add a safety layer alongside Mercedes-Benz’s own systems.

The companies noted the technologies will also support future SAE Level 4 applications, including robolimousines.

Mercedes-Benz also uses Nvidia technology for vehicle-engineering simulations and in its MO360 digital-production platform, covering virtual planning and AI applications. The companies plan to expand the work across the carmaker’s global production network.

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Global telecom employment fell 2.1% year-on-year in Q2 2026, extending a decline dating to 2016, according to a report by MTN Consulting.

The report’s author, Matt Walker, chief analyst at MTN Consulting, said the panel of 145 operators employed about 4.2 million people, down from 4.3 million a year earlier. The 2.1% fall exceeded the decade-long annual average of 1.7%.

The job cuts did not consistently reduce labour costs or establish a direct link between AI adoption, smaller workforces and wider margins. Among 72 sizable operators, MTN Consulting found no measurable relationship between headcount changes and trailing four-quarter EBIT margins.

It also found no consistent link between AI-related news and restructuring. Telefónica cut its headcount by 19.3%, the steepest reduction in the industry, yet had no tagged AI-automation news, while SK Telecom drew the most AI coverage and reduced headcount by 6.2%.

The findings were less positive than those in other industry surveys. Nvidia’s fourth annual State of AI in Telecommunications report stated about 65% of respondents reported AI-driven revenue gains or annual cost reductions above 5%.

MTN Consulting found fewer than 20% of global operators increased revenue by more than 5% a year, while fewer than 20% cut operating expenses by over 5%. Only BSNL, Iliad and MTN Group achieved both, representing less than 2% of the global market.

MTN Consulting said the gap suggested survey responses reflected industry optimism rather than audited operating results.

Labour costs per employee across the global panel rose 6.8% year-on-year to about $62,500. Higher compensation per worker more than offset savings from job cuts, increasing the industry’s total labour bill.

Asia was the only region to add workers during the quarter, with headcount up 0.6%, largely due to hiring by operators including KDDI. Europe posted the largest decline at 3.4%, partly reflecting Telefonica’s 19.3% reduction. Employment fell 2.8% in the Middle East and Africa and 1.2% in the Americas.

Operators who cut staff were more likely to improve operating margins, but better performance was not assured. Event studies dating to 2011 found they outperformed operators which did not cut staff in about 57% to 67% of cases.

MTN Consulting advised operators, vendors and investors to assess workforce changes and automation returns using detailed financial data rather than broad technology claims.

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Apple, Nvidia and EchoStar chair Charlie Ergen reportedly committed $25 million each for the construction of US President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, which has raised $333 million to date in private donations.

The Washington Post reported “the vast majority of the funds raised came from companies and wealthy individuals with interests before the federal government” after obtaining an internal spreadsheet used to track contributions for the fundraising effort.

The Post noted more than three-quarters of the funding was pledged in amounts of at least $5 million, with Amazon, Comcast, Microsoft, and T-Mobile US among the largest corporate donors.

It stated Nvidia and Ergen, among others, requested their donations be kept anonymous

The news site noted companies or executives of firms that have had contracts with the federal government during Trump’s second term accounted for about half of the total funds raised for the project which also includes office space and an underground military facility.

According to internal contractor documents obtained by the Post, the total cost of the project is now $600 million after Trump initially stated he and wealthy donors would pay the estimated $400 million project, although Reuters reported he later unsuccessfully asked Congress for $1 billion. The Post noted Trump’s name did not appear on the list of 67 donors who contributed $10,000 or more to the project.

The funds for the project are administered through a complex, multi-step pipeline involving a private nonprofit, federal agencies and direct oversight by the Trump administration.

The news agency reported Nvidia became “a top contributor to the ballroom in October 2025, nearly three months after it struck a groundbreaking pact with Trump to sell advanced microchips to China despite national security concerns”.

“As an American company, our support for the United States is paramount, and independent of any business interests,” a representative for Nvidia told Mobile World Live. “We were proud to be able to make a donation to a nonpartisan trust that serves all Americans and have said so publicly since the donation was made.” 

Apple and EchoStar did not reply to requests for comment on their contributions.

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AT&T moved to tackle customer pain points such as phone transfers and long customer wait times by refreshing its America’s Best Guarantee programme, in a bid to win subscribers from rivals Verizon and T-Mobile US.

The latest iteration of the guarantee initiative now offers a connection with a customer service expert in five minutes or less, whether they are buying a new device, seeking technical support, paying a bill or starting service. If the timeframe is not met, customers will be offered a callback time.

Should the operator fail to connect customers with an expert within that timeframe, not offer a scheduled callback or falls short of other support promises, eligible customers may receive a benefit such as a bill credit.

Subscribers who pair AT&T Fiber or AT&T Internet Air with a mobile service will now have one dedicated technical expert to help them from start to finish.

AT&T Consumer EVP and GM Jenifer Robertson stated customers expect straightforward, fast and transparent support. She added the changes were intended to reduce friction, build trust and hold the operator accountable when it falls short of its service standards.

The operator offered its AT&T Guarantee to fibre, dedicated internet and wireless business customers after it launched a year ago.

In March 2026, AT&T extended the programme to offer bill credits to small businesses using its Internet Air fixed wireless access (FWA) service in the event of network outages.

In Q2 2026, AT&T reported 432,000 post-paid phone net additions while Verizon and T-Mobile had 184,000 and 277,000, respectfully.

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Verizon and Ericsson claimed the first pre-standard 6G field call in the 7GHz range, moving their testing from the laboratory to a commercial network site.

The call was conducted at a Verizon commercial site in Concord, California, using an Ericsson 6G proof-of-concept kit. The companies tested upper mid-band frequencies outdoors and measured how the signals penetrated a building.

The test used a base station installed on a site shelter and user equipment housed in a 12-by-8-foot mobile enclosure capable of supporting stationary outdoor and indoor radio configurations.

Positioned away from the site shelter housing the base station, the mobile test unit features custom power backups, varied glass and wall material configurations. The setup allows engineers to measure how a pre-standard 6G stack operating over a 400MHz carrier handles line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight paths, foliage, physical obstacles, and building entry loss.

The companies verified an outdoor call and are also testing how 6G signals travel from open-air environments into buildings. The work measures coverage, throughput, latency, stability and feature performance in real-world conditions.

Verizon CTO and SVP of technology development Yago Tenorio stated Ericsson plays a key role in the operator’s 6G Innovation Forum and its efforts to turn 6G research into practical deployments. He added the outdoor trial would provide technical insights to help shape global standards and guide the design and deployment of future networks.

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OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar reportedly warned businesses using low-cost Chinese AI models could face cybersecurity risks and said Western alternatives offered greater protection.

Speaking to Bloomberg at the International AI Summit in Dublin, Friar urged companies considering Chinese models to assess the safety and security risks.

OpenAI and rival Anthropic face growing competition from open-weight AI models, particularly those developed in China. Users can download and run them on their own hardware, often at a lower cost than leading US alternatives, with comparable performance on some tasks.

Chinese releases accounted for the largest share of generative AI model downloads on hosting platform Hugging Face in August, reported the outlet.

OpenAI and Anthropic mainly offer closed models which cannot be downloaded or modified. Both companies have argued open alternatives pose greater risks.

Anthropic head of international Guillaume Princen voiced similar concerns about open-weight models at the event.

“I can’t talk for open models. But by definition, there’s more risk with them,” he said.

The comments follow several cases of advanced AI systems behaving unexpectedly during cybersecurity tests.

In July, OpenAI disclosed its models had breached systems operated by AI start-up Hugging Face during an authorised cybersecurity evaluation.

Anthropic has also disclosed examples of model misbehaviour, including a Claude model submitting a false tip related to a homicide investigation, Bloomberg reported.

Friar nevertheless cautioned US AI companies against slowing releases.

“I do think that we need to pace it but not slow it down so much that we get this imbalance on who has access to the tools that potentially, from a cyber perspective, create real mission-critical issues in the world,” she said.

Katti plans exit
Also yesterday, Sachin Katti, OpenAI’s infrastructure lead, stated on LinkedIn he plans to leave his position on 15 November but will continue to support the company as an advisor.

“After an incredible year at OpenAI, I’ve decided to move on to build something new,” he stated.

Prior to joining OpenAI in November 2025, he held various technology roles at Intel, including Chief Technology and AI Officer.

CNBC reported Uday Ruddarraju, who has been serving as OpenAI’s CTO of compute, will replace Katti and lead the company’s overall compute organisation.

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Telus Digital is now a deployment partner for Germany-founded AI customer service specialist Parloa, expanding its enterprise services portfolio with support for the latter’s AI agents.

Under the agreement, businesses will buy the platform directly from Parloa and use Telus Digital for integration, change management, managed services, and other professional work. Telus Digital will also introduce Parloa’s technology to existing and prospective clients.

Parloa’s agents handle authentication, bookings, payments, and order enquiries, transferring conversations to a human when personal assistance is needed.

The company cited its own research to illustrate the shortcomings of existing customer-service tools. Its study of 10,000 enterprise websites and 4,000 chat interactions found fewer than 9% of chatbot conversations reached a resolution, while only about 10% of escalation attempts connected users with a person.

Separately, its Consumer Patience Index, a survey of 1,001 US consumers conducted by Propeller Insights, found nearly a third would switch brands to avoid being put on hold.

“Consumer expectations are high, and brand loyalty is fragile,” stated Parloa CRO Chris Silver. “They need to have their issue solved, the first time, on their preferred channel and with no unnecessary delays.”

The agreement expands Parloa’s delivery capacity in North America and Europe. Its platform runs on Microsoft Azure and supports multiple AI models, including OpenAI’s GPT series. The company stated it complies with GDPR and meets ISO 27001 and SOC 2 standards.

Telus Digital global SVP of growth Will Mayo framed the partnership around cost, arguing high volumes of repetitive contact-centre interactions can increase the cost to serve without improving customer experience. He said Parloa’s agents could handle routine requests and transfer more complicated cases to a person.

Telus Digital stated Parloa will complement rather than replace its existing tools because no single product is likely to cover every client requirement. Its portfolio already includes conversational AI combining voice, generative AI and agentic automation.

Backed by parent company Telus, the digital services division operates with more than 83,000 employees across over 35 countries.

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A high-stakes legal showdown between two giants of the mobile industry reached a critical turning point, as a US jury found Arm breached its long-standing Architectural Licence Agreement (ALA) with Qualcomm.

According to a statement by Qualcomm released yesterday (13 October), a jury in a US district court determined Arm failed to honour its contractual commitments and intentionally acted to disrupt Qualcomm’s business operations.

The decision marks a major escalation in the bitter dispute between the semiconductor heavyweights. The verdict follows what Qualcomm characterised as a prior court win last year in the ongoing legal battle over custom CPU architectures, licensing rights, and the deployment of advanced silicon design.

Qualcomm framed the outcome as a defence of open market competition and a validation of its technology roadmap.

“Together with Qualcomm’s prior court victory, this outcome further exposes Arm’s broader intentions to harm Qualcomm and its ecosystem,” Qualcomm said. “This outcome is a victory for innovation and competition, and we remain focused on developing and delivering industry-leading semiconductor products including our Oryon CPUs to customers and consumers worldwide.”

While Qualcomm claimed victory, Arm stated it yesterday it was “pleased with jury’s decision today finding for Arm on four claims and awarding only one dollar in damages on each of Qualcomm’s other two claims”.

“Despite Qualcomm’s pursuit of this case in an attempt to deprive Arm of billions of dollars under our licence agreements, the jury’s verdict confirms that Arm operated in good faith under its technology licence agreement and its award of only two dollars confirms the merit of Arm’s arguments in the case.”

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (pictured) reportedly outlined plans to invest $2 billion across Europe to ramp adoption of AI technology and the company’s products.

Bloomberg reported Huang revealed the plan yesterday (13 October) during an event in Paris, which is part of a tour including stops in London and Berlin.

Huang said the fresh investments, to be announced in the next week, are on top of $8 billion the company previously committed to the continent, according to the news agency.

He also announced new funding for French start-ups Doctolib, Genesis AI, Pigment and Entalpic.

Nvidia’s founder also promoted open-source models, arguing their lower costs and greater flexibility could help Europe close the gap with the US on advanced AI.

The chipmaker is a major partner of French company Mistral AI, which develops open-weight AI models. It has invested in Mistral and supplies accelerators for its data centres.

“Open models are important as they can be customised for languages and for your own sovereignty,” he said, according to Bloomberg.

Nvidia’s GTC Berlin conference is schedule for 20-22 October.

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A survey by Verizon Frontline revealed daily AI usage by US public safety agencies nearly tripled over the past year while drone and robot deployments also saw an uptick.

The sixth annual Verizon Frontline Public Safety Communications Survey, conducted by Lexipol Media Group, highlighted daily use of AI reached nearly 32%, while 56% of public safety agency users anticipate daily AI reliance within three years, signalling it as a critical decision-support tool.

Additionally, the daily use of drones and robots increased from 15% to 26% as agencies more frequently use them to navigate hazardous environments to keep human emergency responders out of harm’s way while providing real-time situational awareness.

Network resilience remains a priority as agencies adopt these technologies, with more than 77% of the responders identifying it and reliability as their main operational requirements. Network performance also shapes personal device choices, with about 49% of respondents citing resilience and reliability as the biggest factor when selecting a device plan.

Kim Mirabella, VP of Verizon Public Sector and Verizon Frontline, stated the 2026 findings show technologies including AI and robotics, once considered futuristic, are already essential tools used by first responders every day.

Verizon stated 1,035 US public safety professionals took part in the survey

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Apple expanded its smart home portfolio of devices as it looks to better compete against rivals including Google and Amazon, which included the debut of its $299 HomeView hub.

HomeView Hub, which is available from 13 November, recognises users by their faces to allow them to give hands-free commands to access personal content across Messages, FaceTime, Calendar, Reminders, and Find My.

It is available in two distinct configurations: a tabletop design powered by a standard USB-C cable or a wall-mounted version which connects via various options, including Ethernet or Power over Ethernet (PoE) wired mounts, with the latter available in early 2027.

HomeView Hub, which includes a 7-inch LiquidRetina display, does not have buttons, instead it relies on the new Siri AI to enable users to access apps or content. With a built-in, front facing FaceTime camera, it can recognise up to six different users by voice or appearance. It then gives personalised responses to each one for tasks such as accessing calendars, videoconferencing, viewing cooking recipes or listening to music through its speakers.

CCS Insight chief analyst Ben Wood, who attended today’s (13 October) event in New York City, told Mobile World Live HomeView “has quite a distinctive design compared to rival smart home devices”.

“It will be immediately familiar to anyone who has used an Apple Watch, and Apple has the advantage that it can use Apple ID to easily and securely identify individuals in a household to provide information specifically about them,” he said. “It is little surprise that the HomeView coincides with Apple’s renewed push on Siri AI and Apple Intelligence.

“The company has undoubtedly been waiting for the upgraded Siri experience, given how important the voice interactions are with this product,” he added.

To increase its presence in the smart home sector, the iPhone maker partnered with LG Electronics Inc. and Schneider Electric SE to release a lineup of Apple Home Collection accessories, including indoor and outdoor cameras, a video doorbell, thermostats, and door locks.

Wood noted these partnerships signalled a willingness by Apple to go outside of its own ecosystem to develop new products and services.

“However, looking closely, it appears like there has been very deep collaboration between Apple and these partners to ensure the design, engineering and experience closely match what users would expect,” he explained.

While Apple’s tie-ups with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric mark a shift from its traditional strategy, Wood argued they give consumers a single source for a smart home set-up.

“By making cameras, a lock, thermostats and a doorbell as easy to connect as AirPods, the companies address one of the sector’s biggest hurdles: “the complexity of getting things working,” he said.

Availability for the Home Collection products starts in December, with select accessories available beginning early 2027. The prices range from $199 to $399.

“Since Apple is calling the suite of new products the Apple Home Collection, I’d expect it to dedicate space in its extensive network of Apple Stores to showcase a turnkey smart home solution,” Wood stated. “Given that many technology enthusiasts have already adopted smart home products from other manufacturers, I suspect Apple’s new lineup will appeal to customers who have considered investing in a smart home device but have been apprehensive about the category’s complexity.”

Under the leadership of CEO John Ternus, who took over in September from Tim Cook, Wood argued Apple is taking a cautious approach to the smart home market where rivals such as Amazon’s Ring, Google’s Nest and Arlo and others “already have a strong profile”.

“But Apple may benefit from making the experience seamless, building on its trusted reputation and focus on privacy while giving existing customers yet another reason to stay inside its extremely strong ecosystem,” he said.

More devices
Alongside HomeView, Apple unveiled an updated Apple TV 4K set-top box with built-in microphones and a remote control which is easier to locate. It also features Siri AI which enables users talk to Siri hands-free.

Customers in the US and 29 other countries and regions can pre-order Apple TV 4K starting today from Apple’s online and in the Apple Store app, with availability in stores beginning 13 November. It cost $299 or $9.83 per month for six months.

It also introduced the HomePod mini 2 speaker, which comes in a fresh range of colours, including pink, green, blue, white, and midnight, and features lighting animations which reflect the album artwork of the song being played.

The speaker can provide room-filling sound on its own, as part of a stereo pair or in a multiroom audio set-up. When connected to the new Apple TV 4K, four HomePod Mini 2 speakers can create a surround-sound home cinema system which Apple claims is its most immersive home theatre setup to date. Multiple users can also control smart home accessories and automations securely through voice commands.

HomePod Mini 2 can be pre-ordered starting today with availability beginning on 30 October. It is priced at $149.

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Interview: AT&T Business selected Amazon Leo for an enterprise broadband service designed to complement its fibre and 5G offerings, describing the satellite provider as a business-grade alternative to Starlink.

Shawn Hakl, SVP and head of product at AT&T Business (pictured), told Mobile World Live the service adds a third connectivity option, including in areas beyond the reach of AT&T’s terrestrial networks.

“We’ve done a lot of integration with Amazon and we’re working with them at different levels,” he said. “We’ve tested the product out pretty extensively and we’ve seen sub-50 millisecond latency. We’re also extremely happy with the throughput.”

Amazon Leo selected AT&T Business as its sole US telecoms launch partner.

“They’ve been extremely willing to work with us to fine-tune the interaction between the two networks,” Hakl explained. “We’re working closely with them on how to harmonise the in-air component and the interaction between our network and the ground stations.”

AT&T Business is providing the last-mile connectivity and local customer equipment for the service, while working with Amazon on the interaction between AT&T’s terrestrial network and Amazon Leo’s ground stations.

He said the operator is striving to make the connection between its network and the cloud “a software consumable element” which could be combined with satellite, wireless and wireline connectivity in an end-to-end architecture rather than offered as a series of point-to-point products.

Hakl said some customers will want traditional active-passive setups, others active configurations and some multiple-box arrangements.

“I don’t think we can get down to a single box in the first iteration,” he noted.

Hakl stated combining fibre, 5G and satellite will enable AT&T Business to deliver different services, SLAs and business outcomes for each customer. This will give customers more granular control over how applications use network resources, including the ability to balance performance, cost and security across their connectivity options.

Customers could choose how much control they retain, Hakl said. Some may want to manage network decisions in detail, while others could leave them to AI models.

Hakl noted AT&T has sold satellite services for a decade, particularly in agriculture, manufacturing and retail, while public safety through FirstNet is another area of focus.

“If the price point comes down, obviously it becomes more of an option for different segments in the market,” he stated. “We’re just impressed with Amazon’s technology and feel like it’s the business-grade solution that’s out there.”

Hakl said AT&T Business expects to offer the service next year, although the timing remains tied to Amazon Leo’s satellite launch schedule.

Launch timing
In July, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp outlined a plan to rebuild its Florida launch pad with a new configuration after a failed attempt as it works toward returning its New Glenn rocket to flight before the end of the year.

Also in July, Amazon Leo applied to the US Federal Communications Commission to deploy up to 5,105 birds to deliver direct-to-device services to mobile devices.

And in October, Amazon company communications manager Zack Brown revealed the company currently has 396 LEO birds in orbit and said the company has built over 1,000 satellites at its 172,000-square-foot production facility in Kirkland, Washington.

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Microsoft took the wraps off the third-generation of its in-house AI chip, as part of a plan to reduce its reliance on buying processors from Nvidia.

The Maia 300 chip will be used for the tech giant’s multi-gigawatt deployments in 2027, making it the primary inference system for Microsoft products and services. Reuters reported it plans to potentially deploy more than 1 million of the chips next year.

According to a blog post from EVP Scott Guthrie, the company expects Maia 300 to deliver 40% more tokens per megawatt compared to leading GPU-based systems without naming Nvidia.

The Maia 300 is built as a single system, with software, silicon, physical rack infrastructure, networking, and data centres co-designed to operate as a single platform.

Guthrie noted a 96-chip rack offers seven times the rack-scale token throughput of Microsoft’s Maia 200. He said the new chip is “designed with an inference-first architecture optimized for long-context, memory-intensive and decode-heavy AI workloads”.

The Maia 200 chip powers the company’s production workloads, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, as well as OpenAI models running on Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service.

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MWL‘s Mike Robuck sits down with executives from Ericsson, AT&T, Verizon and the US Department of War (DoW) to discuss the progress Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has made this year and where it is headed next.

Ericsson Federal CEO Christopher Ling sees sensing as a potential killer app for 6G, arguing it could give the US military a reason to invest in commercial cellular infrastructure beyond connectivity.

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) turns communications networks into sensors by analysing radio signals reflected from objects. It can detect, track and identify objects in much the same way as radar.

Ericsson Federal Technologies Group is the vendor’s US unit focused on adapting its commercial network technology for federal government and national-security customers.

ISAC has moved beyond laboratory testing over the past year. It has been demonstrated at a stadium, included in a US Department of War (DoW) contract and proposed for a Los Angeles, California trial ahead of the 2028 Olympics.

Dr Tom Rondeau, principal director of the DoW’s FutureG programme, said denser 5G and 6G networks, edge-based AI compute and greater access to commercial spectrum are making network-based sensing viable.

“We have a network that covers 70% of the landmass of the United States and about 98% of the population,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to use this for, to kick off the value proposition of ISAC.”

Rondeau highlighted drones, particularly swarms, as the immediate focus. The aim is to find, fix and track potentially thousands of devices, including in dense cities where traditional sensors struggle and radar cannot simply be pointed into open sky.

“It’s one thing to have a missile defence system or a drone defence system that gets to look up and out into open airspace,” he said, “but it’s another to track it in downtown New York [City] or downtown [Washington] DC.”

Network density could compensate for the limited sensing range of individual sites. At the power levels involved, a single base station might reach only a few kilometres, but sites spaced every half kilometre could extend coverage across much of the network.

Rondeau (pictured, left) pointed to Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, in which drones smuggled deep into Russian territory and controlled over Russia’s cellular network reportedly destroyed roughly a third of its strategic bomber fleet.

“That tells us that we can no longer think of border security as just looking out of our geographical borders,” he said. “We have to be able to look across our entire nation.”

Rondeau also sees civilian applications for ISAC. Drawing on his time at DARPA studying emergency planning, he cited Hurricane Katrina, when evacuation plans fell apart because people did not go where planners expected.

“It’s not like we’re going to redirect them to where we want to be,” he said, “so why don’t we redirect the resources to where they actually are.”

Trials
AT&T and Ericsson ran a drone-detection demonstration near AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, during the FIFA World Cup football tournament a few months ago.

In nearby Dallas, Verizon and Samsung tested a crowd-density heatmap at the World Cup FanFest area, designed to help fans find shorter queues and organisers manage foot traffic.

“That was a crowd sensing for the FanFest area, which is completely different to detecting drones,” said Verizon CTO Yago Tenorio. “It looks like a business-to-business opportunity that you can monetise.”

Tenorio explained ISAC presents fewer privacy concerns than cameras because it returns shape, movement and rough size rather than identity. It can distinguish “a pedestrian from a bicycle and a drone from a bird”, though not one person from another.

The DoW has also begun funding development. In July, Cohere Technologies won a $28 million contract from the FutureG Office to build a multi-waveform radio access network prototype which uses commercial cellular infrastructure to detect drones and other aerial threats.

Ericsson and Finnish state-owned ICT company Erillisverkot have also run live demonstrations in a Helsinki cargo harbour, using sensing data from several network points to detect small, low-altitude drones.

Verizon’s 6G forum
Verizon has made ISAC one of two anchor themes of its 6G Innovation Forum, which it expanded in September. The other theme is AI wearables. Tenorio stated the forum was created to “design 6G bottoms up”, starting with viable use cases and how they might be monetised.

At Qualcomm’s San Diego, California campus, Verizon tested 100MHz to 400MHz of millimetre-wave spectrum across four synchronised transmission and reception points. The system mapped the position and velocity of an airborne target and moving ground vehicles while keeping a phone user on the ground connected over standalone 5G. Verizon presented the trial as a test of drone and vehicle safety tracking.

Millimetre wave was the only spectrum which offered enough bandwidth, Tenorio said, and bandwidth, more than frequency, determines sensing accuracy.

“The precision of the positioning and the radar image… is proportional to the bandwidth of the signal,” he stated. “Not so much the frequency, but the bandwidth.”

Technology divide
Huawei appears to have an early lead in ISAC deployments. Ling said Ericsson had been told the Chinese vendor has more than 300 ISAC-capable systems operating, although he cautioned the figure might not be exact. He linked the reported lead to China’s early nationwide shift to standalone 5G.

Ling (pictured, left) explained there’s a difference in terms of network architecture. In a monostatic configuration, one tower transmits a signal and receives its reflection, indicating an object’s presence and general direction. Huawei developed a monostatic system and, in Ling’s view, may now be reconsidering that approach. As far as he knows, Ericsson is the only company using a multistatic configuration, in which one site transmits and other sites receive the reflected signal, enabling more precise location and tracking.

A monostatic system might show an object is off to the left, he said. A multistatic system could place it 1,500 metres away, measure its speed and track it to within eight to 10 metres, the resolution he said the Arlington demonstration achieved.

Ling stressed that Ericsson is focused on 5G sensing rather than a fully integrated sensing and communication system. Turning a 5G network into a radar remains a significant technical challenge, he noted, and the company wants to establish the capability before moving further.

It has committed $100 million to ISAC and expects a commercial product within two years, ahead of the standards debate expected at the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference.

Ling said micro-Doppler signatures from spinning propellers could allow the system to identify a drone type as well as locate it. “It’s not only detecting, tracking, you can get identification from it as well,” he said.

The resolution may eventually be good enough to support targeting without the more expensive radar systems the military uses today.

“You’ve got a drone that costs $30,000 and we’re shooting it down with a million-dollar missile,” he said. “This starts to bend the cost curve.”

Ericsson has held discussions with European countries bordering Russia, Ling added, and sees growing interest in the Middle East, where governments are concerned about protecting infrastructure.

From 5G to 6G
Tenorio described current ISAC work as a step towards 6G. Vendors are fitting sensing into 5G and 5G-Advanced systems while preserving as much connectivity capacity as possible; 6G would allow them to design the capability into the network from the outset.

“On 5G, you’re just squeezing it in as best as you possibly can,” he said. “But if you understand how it works, you have the opportunity to design it natively in 6G in a way that comes with no compromise.”

Verizon plans to extend its ISAC work to Los Angeles. The carrier has applied to the Federal Communications Commission for a one-year experimental licence to use 4.8GHz to 4.9GHz spectrum, part of the 4.4GHz band the NTIA is studying for 5G and 6G. It plans to test Ericsson hardware and software in and around its LA lab. The filing describes an outdoor private network within a five-kilometre radius, separate from commercial networks. The application is pending.

Tenorio called the band “a good compromise” between available bandwidth and a frequency low enough to propagate farther. Verizon has also applied to take part in the NTIA’s Mission 6G 28 programme, which will showcase 6G technology around the 2028 Olympics.

“LA will be an important opportunity for us to display not only what 6G is about… but where we are in terms of advancing the technology,” he said.

Beyond drones and crowds, Tenorio sees enterprise uses such as digital twins of factories and campuses. At shorter ranges, he said, ISAC could support vital-sign monitoring and fall detection in elderly care.

Shawn Hakl, SVP and head of product at AT&T Business, sees the value in places where cameras and sensors are impractical, or the assets belong to someone else. He cited public safety, analytics and flow control, and spotting changes such as an unplanned obstruction on a city street.

“ISAC gives us a way to get sort of topology information, environment information without having physically deployed stuff and basically getting signal data back,” he said.

Ling stated the military case may ultimately depend on sensing rather than connectivity: a customer which would not buy a 5G network solely for communications could still need the infrastructure to obtain 5G sensing.

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Spain-based CaixaBank and Google Cloud extended their partnership to 2033 as the bank looks to expand its use of AI and cloud technologies to serve 13 million customers.

Under the agreement, CaixaBank will deploy Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise platform to develop and manage AI agents. The bank expects the agents to help employees analyse complex financial information, automate repetitive tasks and streamline everyday workflows.

The companies identified three areas for the expanded partnership. CaixaBank plans to use Gemini Enterprise to analyse large datasets and deploy specialised AI agents for document management, classification and summarising complex content.

CaixaBank will combine its private systems with Google Cloud infrastructure to increase resilience, scalability and service availability. The agreement also covers threat detection and security monitoring.

The agreement includes professional services, joint projects and training to help employees use the new technology. The work will operate under CaixaBank’s security, privacy and responsible AI policies.

CaixaBank first partnered with Google Cloud in 2023. The bank stated it has the largest digital customer base in Spain’s financial sector.

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Elon Musk-controlled SpaceX struck a deal to buy a nationwide low-band spectrum portfolio from Grain Management, ratcheting up its challenge to compete with US carriers for mobile customers.

The transaction for all of Grain Management’s nationwide portfolio of up to 14MHz of paired spectrum in the 800MHz band is subject to regulatory approval by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Financial terms are not available.

“This is the last critical piece of the spectrum puzzle needed for SpaceX to provide complete phone coverage in America,” Musk said on X above a post which questioned the company’s direct-to-device (D2D) strategy.

SpaceX stated Starlink Mobile’s global 2GHz mid-band spectrum will deliver high-capacity coverage in the US, while the newly acquired low-band frequencies will improve signal reach through obstacles including walls and extend service to devices indoors. The company added most existing mobile devices already support the underused band.

SpaceX plans to pair its satellites with ground-based femtocells to provide 5G mobile coverage, a plan many executives in the industry consider far-fetched.

The company stated the low-band spectrum would address a key remaining technical gap and help pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major US mobile carrier.

SpaceX stated once it garners approval it “will deploy a flexible architecture combining our satellite-to-mobile constellation in space with an advanced terrestrial deployment that can seamlessly connect devices everywhere”.

The move follows through on its plan to roll out a D2D service to compete against T-Mobile US, Verizon and AT&T.

On 6 October, SpaceX announced a regulatory win after it secured FCC approval to launch 15,000 next-gen satellites for D2D.

In August, T-Mobile US completed the sale of its nationwide 800MHz spectrum portfolio to Grain Management in exchange for $2.9 billion in cash and all of the latter’s 600MHz spectrum licences more than a year after agreeing a deal in principle.

Grain Management previously outlined a plant to work with energy and infrastructure specialist Black & Veatch to market the spectrum to utilities, critical infrastructure operators and rural and regional carriers.

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