Iain Morris

London

News Editor at LightReading

Articles

Telcos tire of all-you-can-eat data, get a taste for portion control

4 days ago | lightreading.com | Iain Morris

A slowdown in the rate of data traffic growth, acknowledged by telcos at Futurenet last week, is a strange moment to think of more usage-based prices. A restaurant opens in town, charging $10 per diner for an all-you-can-eat buffet. Gluttons pile in, stacking plates with mountains of food that are quickly devoured and rebuilt multiple times.
The 6G 'golden band' is probably worthless in mobile

1 week ago | urgentcomm.com | Iain Morris

The telecom industry has moved into higher frequency bands with the launch of each new mobile generation, and their value is diminishing. If you are one of the planet's estimated 2.1 billion 5G subscribers, there is a good chance you have made use of spectrum in or around the 3.5GHz frequency range when reading news, watching videos or listening to music on your phone. Spectrum is the invisible fuel of the mobile telecom industry, a finite natural resource that keeps the gigabytes flying.
IoT-enabled early-warning systems help businesses prepare for extreme weather

1 week ago | urgentcomm.com | Ankit Agarwal |Iain Morris |Becky Bracken

With climate change on the horizon, businesses must prepare for and build resilience to extreme weather events. By Ankit AgarwalThe environment is becoming increasingly unpredictable in today's world. Sudden storms, rising temperatures and extreme weather events are no longer rare—they are now a regular part of everyday business reality. With these shifts, companies are finding it harder to protect not just their operations and assets but also their workforce.
MasOrange coziness with Huawei could upset Ericsson, Trump and EU

1 week ago | lightreading.com | Iain Morris

To US President Donald Trump, his entourage and various democratically elected governments, Huawei is a sinister extension of the Chinese state.
Trouble for TIM as customers decamp

1 week ago | lightreading.com | Iain Morris

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Swisscom pays for Vodafone deal; Arm disappoints investors; Amdocs enjoys automation boost; Community Fibre hails profit. Telecom Italia, known as TIM to its friends, reported a net loss of €81 million (US$91 million) for the first quarter of 2025 despite growing revenues 3% year-over-year, to about €3.3 billion ($3.7 billion).
The 6G 'golden band' is probably worthless in mobile

1 week ago | lightreading.com | Iain Morris

The telecom industry has moved into higher frequency bands with the launch of each new mobile generation, and their value is diminishing. If you are one of the planet's estimated 2.1 billion 5G subscribers, there is a good chance you have made use of spectrum in or around the 3.5GHz frequency range when reading news, watching videos or listening to music on your phone. Spectrum is the invisible fuel of the mobile telecom industry, a finite natural resource that keeps the gigabytes flying.
Microsoft Shows Who Really Controls Europe’s ‘Sovereign Clouds’

1 week ago | datacenterknowledge.com | Iain Morris

A blog by Brad Smith, Microsoft's president, is designed to reassure Europeans about the safety of their cloud services, but it could have the opposite effect. In the unlikely event of an emergency, back-up copies of our code will be stored in Switzerland. This is part of the strap-in advice Microsoft offers to European partners operating a "sovereign cloud." As on flights, the actual disaster would probably follow more panicky exchanges about sticking heads between legs and praying for survival.
Microsoft shows who really controls Europe's 'sovereign clouds'

1 week ago | lightreading.com | Iain Morris

In the unlikely event of an emergency, back-up copies of our code will be stored in Switzerland. This is part of the strap-in advice Microsoft offers to European partners operating a "sovereign cloud." As on flights, the actual disaster would probably follow more panicky exchanges about sticking heads between legs and praying for survival. But the pilot of a passenger plane doesn't usually parachute out mid-flight, which is effectively what Microsoft would be doing.
Ericsson and Nokia were cutting 20,000 jobs as Huawei grew

2 weeks ago | lightreading.com | Iain Morris

About a tenth of jobs at Ericsson and Nokia have disappeared in just over two years, while Huawei has added 33,000 R&D roles since it came under US fire. Suspension of disbelief is an essential cognitive step for readers of fantasy novels, faced with physics-defying magic, invented creatures and improbable storylines. It has also become necessary for travelers to MWC Barcelona, the Brobdingnagian telecom tradeshow that takes place in February or March each year.
Samsung looks beyond Intel for virtual RAN future

2 weeks ago | lightreading.com | Iain Morris

General-purpose processors made by AMD and Nvidia are in the virtual RAN works at Samsung, which downplays the need for hardware accelerators. Ericsson talks a lot these days about virtual radio access network (RAN) technology, or what it prefers to call cloud RAN. But Samsung has more than just verbiage in white papers to flaunt. In a ranking of virtual RAN (or vRAN) leaders, compiled several weeks ago by market research firm Dell'Oro, the South Korean vendor comes first.