Mobile & Wireless Roundup No. 137

Welcome to the 137th edition of this newsletter. I have recently started watching Black Mirror on Netflix. I know I am very late to it, especially considering how familiar many people in the technology industry are with the series, having watched some if not most of the episodes.

Although I have only just finished season two, I have already noticed several recurring themes and interesting parallels with the real world. One storyline that appears more than once involves a partner dying and the surviving partner attempting to bring them back. The result is never quite the same. There is always a catch, a compromise or a limitation that cannot be overcome.

For example, in The X-Files, one of the episodes features a genie who brings a dead brother back to life, only for him to return as a silent, decaying corpse. Those who have read the Harry Potter series may remember the Resurrection Stone, which brought back the second brother’s beloved. However, she returned distant, cold and withdrawn, leading him to take his own life.

Similarly, in the Black Mirror episode titled Be Right Back from season two, a woman loses her boyfriend in an accident and is left devastated. A friend signs her up for a messaging service powered by artificial intelligence. It uses his digital footprint to mimic the way he wrote and spoke. This later evolves into video communication, and eventually a humanoid robot that closely resembles him arrives, both in looks and behaviour. This is when the illusion begins to fall apart. The android cannot sleep, eat or display the unpredictable emotions that made him human. It is a surface-level replica, but not the person she loved.

What strikes me about these stories is how they no longer feel like far-off fiction. As we move deeper into the era of artificial intelligence, digital identities and persistent connectivity, these speculative futures are increasingly within reach. I feel we are ready for what will come next. 

For those of you who don’t know me, I am a technologist with over 25 years’ experience in mobile wireless technology, currently working as an independent advisor, analyst, consultant and a trainer. This newsletter is a summary of my posts and other news that caught my attention since the last newsletter.

⦿ 6G

• Free 6G Training: Shaping the Future at the 2025 '6G Global Summit' in Hong Kong (link)

⦿ 5G

• The 3G4G Blog: A Beginner’s Guide to the 5G Air Interface (link)

• Operator Watch Blog: Malaysia Builds Momentum in 5G and Mobile Growth (link)

• Capacity Media - Transforming the stadium experience: How 5G is revolutionising live sports (link)

• Videos from the 2025 CTIA 5G Summit Held in Washington, D.C. on May 6, the 2025 are available (link)

⦿ 4G/LTE

• Dmitry Kurbatov on LinkedIn: VoLTE Privacy Leak - and what else IMS might be giving Away (link)

⦿ 2G/3G

• Opensignal: Hanging onto the fading signal — the challenges of sunsetting 3G networks in New Zealand (link)

⦿ Open & Disaggregated Networks (including Open RAN, vRAN, etc.)

• Three UK doubles Glasgow city centre speeds with UK-first Open RAN rollout (PR)

• MWL: UScellular CTO reveals brownfield open RAN scepticism (link)

• The latest list of 21 Open Testing and Integration Centres (OTICs) from O-RAN ALLIANCE (link)

• Georgios Smaragdakis on LinkedIn: "…Felix Klement, a PhD researcher at Universität Passau, will present our paper on a security study 📵 of Open RAN at the 10th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (June 30 - July 4, 2025)🎙️ in Venice, Italy. In the process, three vulnerabilities were discovered and we provided mitigations that can make future networks more secure…" (link)

⦿ Spectrum

• William Webb on LinkedIn: The One Big Beautiful Bill and Spectrum (link)

• Light Reading: Carr shifts upper 12GHz from 6G to satellites (link)

• UK SPF Event Round-up: Future Spectrum Policy Summit 2025 (link)

• UK SPF Report: Future of the UHF band after 2034 - An analysis of options in the UK (link)

⦿ Private Networks

• Telia tests Lithuania’s first 5G standalone network (PR)

• RCR Wireless: Private 5G docks at Italian port – Fastweb+Vodafone gets Ravenna gig (link)

• Light Reading: AWS kills private 5G offering that competed with carriers (link)

• Private Networks Technology Blog: Newmont Pushes Mining Innovation Forward with Private 5G at Cadia (link)

⦿ Telecoms Infrastructure, Small Cells, Antennas & others

• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Sunday School: Small Cell Farming! (link)

• Real Wireless: Data centre planning for an AI-dominated future (link)

• Buffalo Bills announce Verizon as Official 5G Network and a Founding Partner of new Highmark Stadium (PR)

• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Thursday School: Repeatable Multi-Purpose Street Furniture (link)

• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Sunday School: Repeatable Multi-Purpose Street Furniture – Northern Edition (link)

⦿ Security & Privacy

• Nick Jones on LinkedIn: "Security fail of the week: O2 (Telefónica UK)'s Mavenir IMS is configured to pass Mavenir's debug headers for the B-Party IMSI, MSISDN and Location (Cell ID) to the other party (passed through the P-CSCF), allowing you to find the physical location of any person on the network just by calling them…" (link)

• Pepijn Kok on LinkedIn: "In android 15, you can turn off your 2G network. If you are not aware of any reason you need 2G, turn it off. It will improve your security, and prevent the regular fake base station sms blast issues…" (link)

• Jos Wetzels on LinkedIn: "At this year's Black Hat USA Midnight Blue will present its latest research into the #TETRA radio standard. This time, we managed to obtain the final piece of the TETRA puzzle by reverse-engineering and identifying several vulnerabilities in TETRA's proprietary end-to-end encryption (E2EE) used for the most sensitive communications - such as those by intelligence agencies and special forces…" (link)

• Mohamad Hajj on LinkedIn - Now published: ETSI TR 103 960 V1.1.1 (2025-05) (link)

• Denis Laskov on LinkedIn: "…An interesting paper from a group of academic researchers on major methods of attacking unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), key approaches to counter such attacks, and ideas for future developments in this field…" (link)

• Salim S I on LinkedIn: Researchers at Penn State University just released LORIS, a state-aware, fuzzer for analyzing commercial 5G baseband firmware (link)

⦿ Connected And Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs)

• Huawei: World's First Fleet of 100 5G-A Autonomous Electric Mining Trucks Launched at Yimin Mine (PR)

⦿ Satellites, HAPS, Drones, UAVs & Space

• Telecom Talk - Starlink May Launch Sub-USD10 Satellite Internet Plans in India: Report (link)

• SCMP: China makes world’s first 5G satellite-to-phone video call. Will it test US TikTok curbs? (link)

⦿ Other News and Technology Stuff

• MWL: BMW lifts bonnet on internal genAI moves (link)

• UKTIN - Telecoms Trailblazers: A Day in the Life of Howard Benn (link)

• MWL: Telstra defends mobile coverage claims (link)

• FutureNet World Insights: Partner, Build, or Buy? How Telcos Can Succeed in the Long-Run (link)

⦿ Picture of the week: The picture shows UK’s GCHQ site in Bude, Cornwall as per the official site here. When using Google Lens, Gemini says: “The image shows GCHQ Bude in Cornwall, a satellite ground station and eavesdropping center. GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) is one of the UK's three intelligence and security agencies”. You can read the FAQs from GCHQ here.

Happy to hear your thoughts. Feel free let me know what worked, what didn’t, how I can make this better, etc. Get in touch over LinkedIn!

PDF version of this and previous newsletters are available here.