Telecom Intelligence: Week of May 20, 2024
Microsoft completed the month's AI-platform trifecta by launching Copilot+ PCs — a new Windows hardware class built around Qualcomm's Arm-based Snapdragon chips and on-device AI, the most serious challenge to the x86 laptop order in decades. Nvidia then reminded everyone who is bankrolling the entire cycle: another blowout quarter, data-center revenue up more than fivefold from two years earlier, and a 10-for-1 stock split. And the FCC put a price on the year's most alarming political deepfake, proposing a $6 million fine against the consultant behind the AI-cloned Biden robocalls in New Hampshire.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of February 19, 2024
At 3:30 a.m. on Thursday, AT&T's network began failing nationwide — and for the better part of twelve hours, tens of thousands of Americans couldn't call 911, because a botched software update during a network expansion had taken down the country's largest carrier. It was the week's loudest infrastructure failure but not its most damaging: two days earlier, ALPHV ransomware operators had breached Change Healthcare, the UnitedHealth subsidiary that processes a third of America's patient records, beginning a payments blackout that would strangle pharmacies and providers for months. Between the two disasters, Nvidia reported earnings so strong — data-center revenue up 409% — that a single day's gain added $277 billion in market value.