Telecom industry news covering 5G networks, carriers, spectrum auctions, mobile technology, and telecommunications infrastructure developments.
Telecom Italia's board accepted a cash and stock takeover bid from Poste Italiane, valuing the deal at around €13 billion. The offer includes €1.67 in cash and 0.218 Poste shares per Telecom Italia share. Poste already owns about 20% of Telecom Italia.
Telstra told a Senate inquiry that its July 7-8 network outage, which disrupted Triple Zero, trains, and Eftpos nationally, could have been prevented if a software update had been applied and internal controls were adequate. The outage was triggered by a technician replacing a chassis, causing a GPS card to reset the server's date to 2006.
Fibocom and Intedigo are demonstrating a cross-regional BVLOS teleoperation system at WAIC 2026, allowing visitors to remotely control a real race car in Shanghai via 5G. The system uses Fibocom's FM160 5G module, achieving video latency under 80 ms and control latency under 10 ms.
A misconfigured NTP server that traveled back in time caused a massive mobile outage in Australia, affecting a major carrier's customers. The server provided incorrect time, leading to network synchronization failures.
Ghana opened bidding for 5G licenses valued at $230 million, with rules preventing a single company from owning all spectrum. MTN and Telecel, controlling 95% of mobile internet users, expressed interest. Ghana imposed a 40% premium on MTN bids to curb market dominance.
Verizon announced it will sell 274 company-owned retail locations and eliminate about 500 corporate positions, effective August 16, 2026. The company also plans to lay off 54 employees in Washington state as part of nationwide restructuring. After the transition, Verizon will operate 1,000 company-owned stores and 5,000 independent franchises. CEO Dan Schulman expects AI to replace a large percentage of customer service work.
Pakistan's Senate committee was told a uniform policy is being finalized to allow consumers to transfer e-SIM cards at least 10 times without cost. PTA Chairman noted current policies vary by operator. The committee also discussed 5G rollout, with 499 sites deployed and coverage expected by end of 2026.