Mobile & Wireless Roundup No. 154

Welcome to the 154th edition of this newsletter. If you have been in the industry for a while, like I have, you will have built up a fair number of contacts and connections. The challenge, of course, is keeping track of who is doing what, who has changed roles, and who has quietly retired. Thankfully, LinkedIn has become the go-to place to find out who is where, when they moved there, and which familiar colleagues are now alongside them.

I recently caught up with someone I hadn’t seen in ages. I used to spot him on LinkedIn all the time, but he had all but vanished from my feed. As it turns out, nothing had changed in his job or role. Instead, he had decided to take a step back from LinkedIn because he was simply exhausted by the constant stream of information on LinkedIn. That sent me digging around about LinkedIn fatigue and, sure enough, it really is a thing.

Ironically, reading all the posts about LinkedIn fatigue gave me fatigue of its own. There are endless suggestions out there: spend less time online, unfollow people who are just acquaintances, adjust notification settings, or hit the little x to tell the algorithm you are not interested in something. The small problem with these approaches is that once you have muted or filtered people out, bringing them back into your feed is not straightforward. You can try nudging the algorithm, but how it responds is unpredictable at best.

It is easy to blame this on a lack of transparency, but with so many variables in play I sometimes wonder if even the designers fully understand the system’s behaviour. Perhaps one day a super-algorithm will appear to sort this all out for us. In the meantime, though, we are very much on our own, each of us trying to strike the right balance between staying connected and avoiding being overwhelmed.

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

• Jun Song on LinkedIn: A Big Step Forward for 6G: Key Takeaways from 3GPP RAN Plenary #109 in Beijing (link)

• Light Reading: Verizon launches 6G 'Innovation Forum' (link) – PR here.

• Telecom TV: 6G NeXt project comes to an end (link)

• Gizmodo: Tired of 5G? Qualcomm Says 6G Will Be Here Before the End of the World (link)

• Free 6G Training: Early Results from the 6G-NTN Project (link)

⦿ 5G

• Ookla - Winning 5G FWA Network and Commercial Strategies: Lessons from du, Three, and T-Mobile (link)

• The 3G4G Blog: 5G+ and 5GA Icon (Pictogram) in New Smartphones (link)

⦿ 4G/LTE

• Operator Watch Blog: Libya’s Mobile Industry Amid Recovery and Change (link)

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

• Light Reading: Samsung loses in UK 5G as Vodafone reverts to Ericsson and Nokia (link)

• Fierce Network: Is open RAN going to survive, or not? We found out (link)

• Presentation videos and photos from i14y Lab Summit 2025 - Implement & Consolidate (link)

⦿ Spectrum

• Dave Wright on LinkedIn: "Oh no! According to Verizon's CEO, the U.S. is going to lose "the race to 6G" because we allocated 6 GHz to unlicensed…" (link)

• Fierce Network: SpaceX talks about what it wants to do with its new 2 GHz spectrum (link)

⦿ Private Networks

• GSMA’s M360 Manufacturing Summit: Connecting the Resilient Industrial Revolution (link)

• 5G Private Networks Driving Industry Transformation in APAC (link)

• RCR Wireless: India’s “immense potential” – Tech Mahindra on private 5G, home and away (link)

• Private Networks Technology Blog: Ambra Solutions Powers Private LTE and 5G for Remote Operations (link)

⦿ Telecoms Infrastructure, Small Cells, Antennas & others

• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Thursday School: Gigabit Comes to Guildford! (link)

• Peter Clarke on LinkedIn: “Fantastic Fusion: 100MHz C-Band 5G through Alpha Wireless Fusion antennas delivers performance with elegance to Glasgow City Centre…” (link)

• Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Saturday School: On the Road with Theresa Brown (link)

 ⦿ IoT / M2M / Smart Homes

• RCR Wireless: IoT and AI is a game-changer for supply-chain logistics (link)

• Berg Insight: The global satellite IoT subscriber base to reach 32.5 million by 2029 (PR)

• Afzal Mangal on LinkedIn: "For me, this was the best IoT conference ever… Two things I was once sceptical about, but now I know for sure that they simply work: NTN / Satellite IoT connectivity and the eSIM…" (link)

• RCR Wireless: “A niche within a niche” – how IoT came to terms with the hype (link)

⦿ Security & Privacy

• Denis Laskov on LinkedIn: "Hacking industrial systems: closed protocols, memory attacks, and how to kill a PLC by asking a question…" (link)

• PCMag: Secret Service Uncovers Network of SIM Servers Capable of Disabling Cell Towers (link)

• 404 Media: The SIM Farm Hardware Seized by the Secret Service Is Also Popular With Ticket Scalpers (link)

• Dmitry Kurbatov on LinkedIn: SIM Farm in New York: Fraud Factory or Cyber Threat? (link)

• Denis Laskov on LinkedIn: "Hacking self-driving cars with a smoke machine: Adversarial Fog Attack (AFA) on modern LIDAR systems…" (link)

• Midnight Blue: Tiantong-1 and satphone security – Part 1, Part 2.

• Denis Laskov on LinkedIn: "How to start hacking BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy): affordable hardware, open-source software, step-by-step guide…" (link)

⦿ Smartphones, Devices, Wearables & Gadgets

• Fierce Network: Apple and operators hone in on 5G RedCap smartwatches (link)

• Vodafone, Meta and Google set out recommendations to optimise network capacity to meet user demand (link)

⦿ Satellites, HAPS, Drones, UAVs & Space

• ABI Research: China's NTN and D2C Market Set for Rapid Expansion Amid Mega-Constellation Plans (PR)

• Space News: China promotes direct-to-device satellite services with new guidelines and licensing (link)

⦿ Wi-Fi

• RCR Wireless: Three Wi-Fi 7 trials — at home and at work (link)

• RCR Wireless: AFC breakthrough brings Wi-Fi 7 closer to reality, says Federated Wireless (link)

⦿ Public Safety Networks

• Defence Blog: Poland signs $550M deal for mobile communications nodes (link)

⦿ Sustainability

• The 3G4G Blog: Software Efficiency Matters as Much as Hardware for Sustainability (link)

⦿ Other News and Technology Stuff

• Andrew Collinson on LinkedIn - Evolving Intelligent Engagement: CPaaS can grow 3x to $100bn by 2030, if... (link)

• The Guardian: Farewell Amazon Fresh: the no tills thing was all a bit too awkward (link)

• Chris Littlewood on X: "Digital ID for every adult is not progress. It is the end of a free society dressed up as convenience…" (X post)

⦿ Picture of the week: MIT researchers have developed a reconfigurable antenna that can dynamically adjust its frequency range by changing its physical shape, making it more versatile for both communications and sensing than traditional static antennas. In the image below, the meta-antenna (the shiny latticed material) is shown as part of a curtain that can also adjust household lighting. The prototype is pictured in three views: retracted (top left), expanded (bottom), and alongside the latching mechanism (top right). You can read more about it 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.