Telecom Intelligence: Week of April 1, 2024
AT&T opened April cleaning up after a dataset covering 73 million current and former customers surfaced on a cybercrime forum — forcing millions of account passcodes to be reset and kicking off a breach saga that would shadow the carrier all year. Intel gave Wall Street its first honest look at the cost of rebuilding American chipmaking, disclosing a $7 billion operating loss in its foundry business. And Taiwan's strongest earthquake in 25 years rattled the island that fabricates most of the world's advanced chips — TSMC evacuated fabs, then restarted with minimal damage, a near-miss reminder of how concentrated the silicon supply chain remains.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of March 25, 2024
Brussels completed the transatlantic pincer: eighteen days after the DMA took effect, the European Commission opened non-compliance investigations into Apple, Alphabet, and Meta — testing steering rules, self-preferencing, and the legality of 'pay or consent.' Amazon answered the AI alliance question with its wallet, completing a $4 billion investment in Anthropic, its largest venture bet ever. And the week closed with a Saturday bombshell: AT&T confirmed that a dataset covering 73 million current and former customers — Social Security numbers included — was circulating on the dark web, opening the year's defining carrier-security saga.