Weekly Telecom Intelligence: July 6–12, 2026
The telecom industry continued moving beyond traditional voice and data service during the week of July 6. AT&T expanded its enterprise portfolio through a partnership with Everbridge and completed a low-latency mobility trial with Ericsson and MediaTek, while Verizon became the U.S. connectivity provider for newly manufactured BMW Group vehicles through KDDI's global platform. Telefónica selected Thales to strengthen its IoT eSIM capabilities, Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson deployed private 5G at the Port of Hamburg, and EchoStar's leadership change signaled a deeper strategic transition. The common thread: connectivity is increasingly packaged as part of a broader business solution rather than sold as a standalone service.
Weekly Telecom Intelligence: June 8–14, 2026
The proposed acquisition of SFR by Bouygues Telecom, Iliad and Orange was the largest development of the week — a €20.35 billion transaction that would divide SFR's assets among its three primary competitors and reduce France's mobile market from four national operators to three. In the United States, Optimum announced its mobile business surpassed 700,000 lines through its MVNO arrangement with T-Mobile, and AT&T launched a $3 Unlimited Day Pass for eligible cellular-enabled iPads — available even when the customer's primary phone service is with another carrier. Additional developments included continued defaults under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund and AXON Networks' acquisition of Greenwave Systems, adding software-defined mobile core and Network-as-a-Service capabilities to AXON's automation platform.
Weekly Telecom Intelligence: June 1–7, 2026
The most consequential development of the week came from the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the FCC in a dispute over the agency's process for imposing fines — rejecting a challenge from AT&T and Verizon connected to the handling and sale of customer location information. In satellite connectivity, the FCC granted Amazon Leo conditional relief from a requirement to have half of its planned constellation deployed by the end of July 2026, and the European Commission proposed a revised framework for mobile satellite services built before direct-to-device and large low-Earth-orbit constellations became realistic commercial models. Separately, the FCC released a proposal establishing clearer timelines and fee standards for state and local approval of wireline infrastructure, including a presumptive 120-day deadline for certain right-of-way applications. Together, the developments show regulators addressing how carriers are held accountable, how satellite networks reach scale, how spectrum is coordinated across borders, and how quickly terrestrial infrastructure can be built.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of May 4, 2026
A quieter week on the surface, but one with real signals underneath. Charter's Spectrum Mobile launched a $10 per month Second Line that lets customers run a separate work number on the phone they already carry, the latest proof that cable is competing in wireless on product creativity, not just price. On the regulatory side, the FCC extended and expanded waivers that keep already-authorized foreign-made drones and routers eligible for software and firmware updates, a pragmatic move that acknowledges cutting off security patches would do more harm than the ban itself. And in a sign of the summer ahead, the FCC designated a broadcast auxiliary spectrum coordinator for the FIFA World Cup, kicking off one of the largest special-event spectrum operations the US has ever staged.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of March 9, 2026
The week after Barcelona was about turning announcements into shelf space. AT&T rebuilt its consumer rate card around three new Unlimited Your Way plans, adding an entry-level Value 2.0 tier and letting customers mix and match plans across lines, a direct response to complexity fatigue and a shot at T-Mobile's more rigid lineup. The iPhone 17e hit stores on March 11 and the carriers immediately discounted it to nearly free, confirming that the value segment is where the subscriber fight is happening. In the machine-to-machine world, Verifone announced it will use Thales eSIM technology and the GSMA's SGP.32 standard to manage connectivity across its global payment terminal fleet, one of the first large commercial commitments to the new remote provisioning standard.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of March 2, 2026
Mobile World Congress in Barcelona set the agenda for the entire month, and the loudest story on the keynote stage was not a carrier. SpaceX rebranded its direct-to-cell service as Starlink Mobile, disclosed 10 million monthly active users, and set a target of 25 million by the end of the year. Three days later, T-Mobile's CEO publicly rejected the idea of hosting a Starlink MVNO on his network, which tells you the carriers understood exactly what the rebrand meant. Meanwhile EchoStar closed the book on its fourth-carrier ambitions, reporting year-end results as a self-described hybrid operator that sells spectrum and rides on AT&T's network. On the MVNO side, Juniper Research sized the global market at $54 billion by 2030, and a four-company consortium launched at MWC to industrialize how new MVNOs get to market. Apple rounded out the week with the iPhone 17e, putting Globalstar-powered satellite messaging in a $599 phone.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of February 9, 2026
This was the week the American wireless market showed two very different visions of its future on the same day. On February 11, T-Mobile used a combined earnings call and Capital Markets Day in New York to raise its multi-year targets, posting $71.3 billion in full-year service revenue and setting a goal of 18 to 19 million broadband customers by 2030 across fixed wireless and its growing fiber joint ventures. Hours later, US Mobile, one of the most inventive MVNOs in the country, launched Multi-Network functionality that lets a customer run two national networks at once on a single plan through dual eSIM. One company is spending tens of billions to own infrastructure, the other is treating that infrastructure as an interchangeable ingredient. Rounding out the week, Iridium reported full-year 2025 results on February 12, with $871.7 million in revenue and growing net income, a reminder that the original satellite operators are quietly profitable while the direct-to-cell newcomers burn capital.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of January 26, 2026
Earnings week told one story from three directions: the connection to the home and the connection in the pocket are now a single business. AT&T opened on January 28 with fourth quarter results built on converged fiber and 5G customers, posting $33.5 billion in revenue and its best year of consumer broadband growth in a decade. Verizon answered on January 30 with more than one million total mobility and broadband net additions, its best quarter since 2019, in its first report since closing the Frontier deal. Between them, Juniper Research published a January 27 study forecasting eSIM connections will grow 30 percent in 2026 to 1.5 billion, with the GSMA's SGP.32 standard unlocking the IoT wave. The scoreboard for US telecom has officially changed, and everyone is now reporting to it.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of December 1, 2025
December opened with a switching war and a spectrum blockbuster. T-Mobile rolled out its AI-powered Easy Switch tool on December 1, letting AT&T and Verizon customers log into their carrier accounts through T-Life and see exactly what switching would save them, and by December 4 AT&T had sued, accusing T-Mobile of illegally scraping its servers. On December 4 the GSMA published its eSIM Compliance Report 2025, the industry's most complete snapshot of certified eUICC products, devices, and platforms across consumer and IoT. And on December 5, the FCC's Wireless and Space Bureaus accepted SpaceX's application for filing to operate a new satellite system delivering supplemental coverage from space over EchoStar's AWS-4 and H Block spectrum, formally starting the clock on one of the biggest spectrum transfers in US history.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of November 24, 2025
Thanksgiving week slowed the news cycle but not the paperwork or the price wars. On November 24, Juniper Research forecast that global eSIM connections will grow 300 percent over the next five years, with China's newly opened market described as an immediate opportunity. On November 25, the FCC's bureaus accepted for filing the applications underpinning EchoStar's twin spectrum sales, moving both the SpaceX and AT&T transactions into their formal comment cycles on a coordinated schedule. And through Black Friday week the value segment put on its loudest show of the year, led by Mint Mobile cutting its unlimited plans to 15 dollars a month, half its standard rate.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of October 13, 2025
A week about the plumbing of the industry rather than its headlines. Juniper Research published new figures showing travel eSIM revenue reaching 1.8 billion dollars in 2025, up 85 percent in a single year, confirming how quickly downloadable SIMs are eating international roaming. On October 14 Ericsson reported third quarter results, with sales down but margins holding as the vendor leaned on major contracts in India, Japan, and the UK. And on October 15 Samsung announced a multi-country deal to deploy virtualized, O-RAN compliant network equipment for Vodafone across Europe, starting in Germany and covering thousands of sites over five years.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of September 22, 2025
Succession and space dominated the week. On September 22 T-Mobile announced that Chief Operating Officer Srini Gopalan will become CEO on November 1, with Mike Sievert moving up to vice chairman after leading the carrier through its Sprint-era transformation into the industry's growth engine. Midweek, SpaceX asked the FCC for authority to launch up to 15,000 additional satellites dedicated to direct-to-cell service using the 2 GHz spectrum it is acquiring from EchoStar. And the commentary wave that followed Apple's eSIM-only iPhone Air crystallized into open industry debate about how quickly the physical SIM should disappear worldwide.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of September 15, 2025
Launch week. Apple released iOS 26 on September 15, bringing its redesigned software to existing iPhones days before new hardware arrived. On September 18 Verizon published its latest network quality claims, citing 35 consecutive J.D. Power awards as it defended its best-network positioning amid subscriber losses and mounting pressure on its premium story. And on September 19 the iPhone 17 lineup and iPhone Air reached stores in more than 60 countries, converting the week's record preorders into the industry's biggest annual switching event.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of September 8, 2025
One of the most consequential weeks of the year. On September 8 EchoStar agreed to sell its AWS-4 and H-block spectrum licenses to SpaceX for about 17 billion dollars in cash and stock, a deal that includes a commercial agreement putting Starlink direct-to-cell service in front of Boost Mobile subscribers and effectively ends EchoStar's ambitions as a facilities-based carrier. The next day Apple unveiled the iPhone 17 lineup and the ultra-thin iPhone Air, the first iPhone sold eSIM-only in every market worldwide. By the weekend, preorders for the new lineup were breaking records, led by extraordinary demand in China.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of July 21, 2025
Satellite-to-phone service stopped being a beta this week. On July 23 T-Mobile commercially launched T-Satellite, its Starlink-powered direct-to-cell service, making the US the first major market with broadly available satellite messaging built into a carrier plan, and opened it to rival carriers' customers for ten dollars a month. One day later, Starlink suffered a rare global outage lasting more than two hours, a jarring reminder that the space layer has single points of failure. The same week delivered second quarter earnings from all three national carriers, with T-Mobile posting its best-ever Q2 postpaid growth, Verizon raising full-year guidance, and AT&T beating on wireless while fiber softness drew scrutiny.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of June 9, 2025
Apple redrew its interface and EchoStar escalated to the Oval Office this week. At WWDC on June 9, Apple unveiled iOS 26 with its Liquid Glass design language, the deepest visual overhaul of the iPhone in over a decade, alongside expanded Apple Intelligence features and eSIM-forward platform changes. Two days later, EchoStar chairman Charlie Ergen took his FCC standoff to the top, meeting President Trump on June 12, with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr joining by phone, as the company sought relief from the spectrum review that has frozen its finances. Around the meeting, a broad coalition of industry stakeholders warned the FCC that unwinding EchoStar's licenses would chill investment across the entire spectrum market.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of February 10, 2025
T-Mobile used the year's biggest stage to make satellite texting a mass-market product. In a Super Bowl commercial on February 9, the carrier announced its Starlink-powered direct-to-device beta was open to everyone, including Verizon and AT&T customers, free until July, an audacious play that turned a network feature into a customer acquisition funnel running inside rival subscriber bases. Within a day, both rivals rushed out their own satellite messaging talking points. In Espoo, Nokia reached outside telecom entirely for its next chief executive, naming Intel data center and AI chief Justin Hotard to replace Pekka Lundmark, the clearest statement yet that the vendor sees its future in AI infrastructure rather than radio access alone.
Telecom Intelligence: Week of December 2, 2024
December opened with the quiet part said out loud: Chinese state hackers had burrowed into at least eight US telecom providers, and the government's advice to Americans was to encrypt their way around the phone network. The FCC answered within a day, moving to turn a 30-year-old wiretap statute into a cybersecurity mandate for carriers. Away from the breach, AT&T used its first analyst day in years to commit to 50 million fiber locations and a copper farewell by 2029, Britain's competition regulator blessed the 15 billion pound Vodafone-Three merger with MVNO protections attached, and eSIM Go teamed with Vodafone UK to sell the MVNO model itself as a boxed product.