Welcome to the 168th edition of the Mobile & Wireless Newsletter. It’s February, which means conference season is about to kick off in earnest. Many of you reading this will be involved, directly or indirectly, in MWC. It remains a great place to catch up with peers, see some genuinely impressive demos, exchange ideas and, of course, pick up a bit of off-the-record gossip along the way.
That brings me to something I wanted to gently highlight for Analyst Relations teams. AR teams do a fantastic job keeping industry analysts informed and up to date, but deciding who to prioritise is never easy. When I worked in AR myself, I always made a point of finding time for everyone. At the time, the company was relatively small with a limited product portfolio, so one person could realistically cover it all.
For very large organisations with broad and complex portfolios, that is understandably harder. Multiple AR contacts are often spread across product lines, and occasionally shortcuts are taken. Some analysts are quietly ignored because they are seen as less influential, while others receive disproportionate attention.
I have seen first-hand how risky that approach can be. In one case, I was involved in a private networks discussion for a large utility. The organisation had effectively settled on vendor A for the core and vendor B for the RAN. The decision appeared final. However, an analyst who had been poorly treated by vendor B’s AR team presented a compelling argument for splitting the RAN between vendors A and B. Vendor A was not even being considered for the RAN initially, yet the intervention of a relatively little-known analyst redirected a project worth well over 100 million.
You never quite know how the way you treat someone today might influence outcomes tomorrow.
For those of you who may be new here, I am a technologist with over 25 years’ experience in mobile wireless, currently working as an independent advisor, analyst, consultant and trainer. This newsletter brings together my recent posts along with other news and developments that have caught my attention since the last edition.
⦿ 6G
⦿ 5G
Michael Thelander on LinkedIn: "As I wrote in a LinkedIn post last week, RRC signaling due to AI-related applications could be a cause for concern, while fears about uplink and downlink traffic from these same applications are overblown…" (link)
⦿ 4G/LTE
Chris Cockings on LinkedIn - Field Testing: CAT-1 - Why 2Rx Diversity Checks Matter (link)
⦿ 2G/3G
Tefficient on Bluesky: "Following Sweden's 2G/3G shutdown and 112/VoLTE issues, PTS reports that 8k phones were blocked 1 December 2025 and that 45k additional phones will be blocked on Monday 2 February 2026. https://pts.se/nyheter-och-pressmeddelanden/nu-blockeras-problematiska-telefoner/ " (link)
Rudolf van der Berg on LinkedIn: "Yes! important message that we need to heed. Telcos in Sweden, Australia and the USA have shown they don't know what to check for to shutdown 2G/3G without regulators finding out at the last moment that access to 112, 000 and 911 over has been badly standardised by the 3GPP…" (link)
⦿ Open & Disaggregated Networks (including Open RAN, vRAN, etc.)
Rakuten Symphony Awarded O-RAN Conformance and Interoperability (IOT) Badge Certifications from Japan OTIC (PR)
⦿ Spectrum
SDxCentral: Will the US be an outlier in 6G? (link)
⦿ Telecoms Infrastructure, Small Cells, Antennas & others
Paul Rhodes on LinkedIn - Sunday School : Wat-er Site! (link)
⦿ IoT / M2M / Smart Homes
⦿ Virtualization, Cloud & Edge
DCD: Telefónica converts a hundred copper exchanges into mini Edge data centers for AI and the cloud (link)
Huawei Guest Blog by Martin Creaner: Transformation Towards Autonomously Managed Communications, Cloud & AI Infrastructure (link)
Omdia: Cloud native networks offer significant opportunities for telcos to cut energy costs (link)
⦿ Security & Privacy
Denis Laskov on LinkedIn - Fuzzing 15 commercial cellular basebands: 9 vulnerabilities & honest errors from Google Tensor (link)
Dmitry Kurbatov on LinkedIn: Salt Typhoon US → UK. Telecom entry point? (link)
Denis Laskov on LinkedIn - Detect rogue cell towers for $50: who & why operate stingrays and how to hunt them (link)
Dmitry Kurbatov on LinkedIn - Telecom Security: Is the Classic SOC dead? (link)
⦿ Smartphones, Devices, Wearables & Gadgets
Ben Wood on LinkedIn: "Apple has quietly implemented another layer of privacy for (some) iPhone owners. It has added a new feature that limits the information cellular/mobile networks can use to determine your location from cell site data…" (link)
MWL: eSIM user appetite grows (link)
Michael Thelander on LinkedIn: "There is some debate about whether AI applications should run in the cloud, natively on the smartphone, or a combination of the two…" (link)
⦿ AI, ML & Automation
⦿ Satellites, HAPS, Drones, UAVs & Space
AST SpaceMobile Announces Timing of BlueBird 7 Orbital Launch, Advancing Direct-to-Device Cellular Broadband Connectivity (PR)
MWL: Rogers details D2D package options (link)
PC Watch: Tokyo University of Science launches satellite communication device for 6G. Lightweight using origami technology (link in Japanese)
Total Telecom: Open Cosmos launches first satellites for new LEO constellation (link)
MWL: Airspan, Space Compass advance 5G HAPS (link)
⦿ Wi-Fi
Dean Bubley on LinkedIn: "Is LG유플러스 (LG Uplus) the first telco / ISP to mention that it is planning to trial WiFi8? …" (link)
Dean Bubley on LinkedIn: "Some more takeouts from last week’s Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) #WGCAPAC conference in Tokyo - together with wider observations about wireless in Japan…" (link)
⦿ Public Safety Networks
⦿ Sustainability
MWL: LG Uplus advances green energy push (link)
⦿ Other News and Technology Stuff
TechBrew: Fahrenheit AI (link)
ING - Telecoms Outlook 2026: Communicate, work and play (link)
Sherwood: There are now more than 1 million “.ai” websites, contributing an estimated $70 million to Anguilla’s government revenue last year (link)
Tom’s Hardware: Breakthrough wireless transceiver transmits data 24 times faster than 5G connections, reaching blazing 15 gigabytes per second — Researchers demo invention that uses silicon chip to directly send and receive analog signals from digital data (link)
The Verge: Apple’s second biggest acquisition ever is an AI company that listens to ‘silent speech’ (link)
Bloomberg: US Has Investigated Claims WhatsApp Chats Aren’t Private (link)
⦿ Picture of the week: Shown here is trackside millimetre-wave radio equipment deployed along Japan’s Tokaido Shinkansen. The system replaces the traditional leaky coaxial cable (LCX) approach with high-capacity wireless links, enabling gigabit-class train-to-ground (T2G) and inter-train communications across the entire route. With data rates claimed to be up to 300 times higher than legacy systems, this deployment supports next-generation train control, real-time monitoring, and data-intensive railway operations at very high speeds. Images courtesy of denpa893 on his X post 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.
